Early Trends
Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus takes a look at the increase scoring in the 2009-2010 NBA season and tries to investigate what is causing an uptick in the numbers. A must-read.

ESPN.com's Marc Stein first noticed an early increase in scoring, tying the uptick to the NBA changing rim manufacturers and styles this season. Through the first 10 days of the schedule, teams are averaging 99.4 points per game. While that may not sound like much of an improvement, since they averaged an even 100.0 ppg a year ago, historically defenses tend to be ahead of offenses early in the season. Through Nov. 5, 2008, teams were averaging just 96.3 points a night, meaning scoring is up 3.2 percent so far.

As John Hollinger noted in an ESPN Insider follow-up, the most significant difference has come beyond the arc. The league is hitting 35.8 percent of its threes so far this season, a considerable improvement from last year's 34.3 percent mark at the same time. Could this be tied to the rim? Certainly, although it is awfully early to draw any conclusions.

BBR News: MVP Award Tracker
Justin Kubatko of Basketball-Reference unveils a new feature at the BBR blog which tracks the NBA MVP Award. Check it out.

I looked at 54 years of voting results to determine what factors the voters deemed most important when selecting the MVP. In the end, four factors proved to be much more important than anything else: team wins, points per game, rebounds per game, and assists per game. I'm going to omit the fine details, but using those four statistics I came up with a model to rank MVP candidates in a given year.

15 Footer – So 2000 and Late
Trey Kerby of Hardwood Paroxysm "found a notepad that had this game preview written on it. The year was 1998 [...] " It matches tonight's schedule - here's what said about the matchup between the Detroit Pistons and the Orlando Magic.

This game is the future of the NBA.  Grant Hill and Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway are going to be megastars, like almost on the level of Ricky Davis.  We’re lucky to have such stars on our hands for the entirety of the foreseeable future.

1989 NBA Draft Remix
Jeff Fox of SLAM ONLINE remixes the 1989 NBA Draft, in which Magic legend Nick Anderson is picked by the Dallas Mavericks. The horror. 

Rafer Alston Tells It Like It Is -
Bethlehem Shoals of The Baseline checks up on former Orlando player Rafer Alston, who's still adjusting to life with the New Jersey Nets.