I'm more than halfway through Bill Simmons' 700-page The Book of Basketball, which weighs the merits of players and eras and illuminates the NBA as a true team sport, where individual skills, circumstances and, ultimately, value vary significantly from one 18-ppg, 7-rpg guy to another. Think less MLB and more NFL, where you can argue what Barry Sanders would have done with Emmitt Smith's offensive mates or why a shutdown corner shouldn't be measured solely by INTs, because fewer balls come his way.

Simmons' book mentions a site called 82games.com as a resource for the new age of sports numbers crunching. I went over there and — holy shit — there's a lot of data being processed to determine the value of NBA players.

Just look at the player page for David Lee of the New York Knicks. As far as I can tell, he's a 18-point scorer who grabs 10 rebounds per game and serves as a negative for the Knicks for the second season in a row. Hence, a key to any game for the Knicks should be to keep their leading rebounder and second-leading scorer off the court! (Another key would be to prevent fans from killing themselves, which might be an even tougher task if LeBron snubs us, which I fully expect.)

I hope to be a more sophisticated NBA fan by the Super Bowl, which is when I go into serious sports depression (two straight months without an NFL snap or MLB pitch). By then I should have a firmer grasp on players' assets and liabilities on both ends of the court. And when I see a capable low-post scorer defend like the Venus de Milo, I'll understand better why an 18-10 guy is an overall liability.

(82games.com's Commentary section links to dozens of articles that'll make your brain hurt for a week.)