On his blog, Mark Cuban responds to the criticism Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley dished out on the Dallas Mavericks' defense a couple of nights ago:

"Kenny, if you want to bust on us for switching on the pick and roll, get some stats to back it up. We track conversion rates on everything we do. High pick and roll, elbow pick and roll, whatever, we track it. If its not working Kenny, we adjust. I know that is probably a new concept to you and Charlie B, but thats the NBA of 2006. With all that money you guys make (hey if you are going to talk salaries, lets see how you like it), go out and hire some kids to track what actually happens in a game rather than having TNT bring in kids to go out and get donuts."

Alright, so maybe Cuban could've said this in a less bastardized manner, but he still raises a pretty good point. It's a problem I have with a lot of the so-called analysts on TV today, particularly Charles Barkley and Greg Anthony. They use so many words in one segment -- and admittedly, words that sometimes SOUND good -- yet they never really say anything that's incredibly informative, mostly because they never back up their observations with evidence or statistics. That's called spewing random thoughts, not providing legitimate analysis.

OK, so the Sacramento Kings don't look like they're playing together as a team -- what does that mean? How do you know this? And more importantly, how is this significant? It sounds basic, but that's sort of the point. The analyst should be able to explain to us how the Kings' lack of teamwork is affecting them now compared to previous seasons, when they presumably had good teamwork. Otherwise, how do we know the lack of teamwork is what's ailing the Kings? And if lack of teamwork is the root of their problem, how exactly is it affecting their play? Anyone can say what he thinks is happening. An analyst who's being paid to provide analysis should probably go beyond that.

I've noticed that, when all else fails, a lot of analysts fall back on the "intensity" argument to explain why a team is or isn't playing well, and yet they never really explain what that means or the specific effect it's had on a team. That's sheer laziness. The effect of "intensity" or "energy," if it exists, is like the easiest thing to back up with statistics. For example, if a player comes off the bench and "energizes" his team, the analyst could cite something as easy as the scoring run the team went on from the time the player entered the game and the time the player went back to the bench, and how many points that player contributed or how many steals or blocks he recorded. That's not PER or points per possession or similarity scores or the pythagorean theorem. That's backing up an observation with facts instead of assuming that the audience is going to take your word for it.

In other words -- and getting more to the point -- it's not just saying what happened. It is, at least in some way, telling us how what happened relates to the most fundamental thing in basketball: scoring points and preventing the opponent from scoring points. When the player came in the game, his team scored this many points and held the other team to this many points. Sure, that involves statistics -- points are statistics, after all -- but then again, aren't points the essence of basketball?

I don't doubt that Charles Barkley and Greg Anthony know a hell of a lot about basketball, just like I don't doubt that Joe Morgan and Jeff Brantley know a hell of a lot about baseball. It's not their knowledge I'm criticizing, it's whether they're conveying it effectively. An analyst, at the bare minimum, should tell us how he knows what happened happened, and a lot of them don't even do that. If Greg Anthony believes Vladimir Radmanovic energized the Sonics in the 3rd quarter, he should tell us that the Sonics went on a 13-2 run in the 5:32 that Radmanovic played in the quarter, and that Radmanovic scored 11 of those points. That's not hard to dig up, but at the same time it tells us a lot about Radmanovic's impact.

The main point, and there's really no way around this, is that most TV analysts don't do the extra work required to give their audience a well-supported thought on a matter. You don't have to read "Moneyball" or any of Bill James's baseball abstracts to know that good arguments should be backed with evidence. That's elementary. As a matter of fact, most of us probably learned that in the 4th grade.