Possibly the greatest basketball-to-comics non sequitur ever, courtesy of ESPN’s NBA preview article on Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey:
Morey grew up reading Bill James’ Baseball Abstract and later worked for the stats guru, but his geekier tendencies might actually have more to do with his boyhood love of comic book anti-heroes who cut against the grain, figures like Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. “In a league in which 30 teams are competing for one prize, you have to differentiate yourself somehow,” Morey says. “We chose analytics.”
What’s great is that this article is all about using calm, cool reasoning and “analytics” to explain the decision to trade for Ron Artest!
Bonus: Did I mention that the annual Virtual Memories NBA Preview will be posted on Tuesday morning, just in time for the debut of the 2008-2009 season? I just did!