Late Thursday Bullets

• Remember how only one GM out of 28 predicted for LeBron James would be this season's MVP? That was Daryl Morey, he says. So, reporters, feel free to ask every other GM to explain at length why they are sure the runaway winner the last two seasons is not the guy.
• Brendan Jackson of CelticsHub, watching Rajon Rondo: "When the camera first panned to Rondo bringing the ball up the court, the image prompted my girlfriend to exclaim, 'He looks big!' And it’s true. Rondo’s arms look substantially larger than they did last year. Aside from feeling totally emasculated by Rajon Rondo (nothing new), this transition may be the most interesting part of a player’s progression through his NBA career. The transition to which I am referring is the one from stringy, deer-in-headlights, rookie to completely grizzled veteran. Rondo made the official jump last year from 'flashes of brilliance' to outright star but he still did not look like a guy who had been around the block. Last night, Rondo did not just look like he had been around the block- he looked like he owned it."
• You know how some coaches pine to be general managers? To make all the big decisions? Not George Karl, who is apparently allergic to the CBA.
• The Carlos Boozer injury stings, but a fired up Luol Deng is not the worst news for Bulls fans.
• If you have been thinking of submitting an academic paper to Daryl Morey's conference at MIT, the deadline has been extended. He e-mails: "Response to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Call for Papers has been tremendous with more than double the submissions from last year already. Due to numerous requests, we have extended the deadline for abstract submissions to Oct 30, 2010. Final papers from 1st round abstract qualifiers will still be due Feb 1, 2011. In addition, because of the high quality submissions we have already received, we will be adding a poster session this year so more submissions will be seen by the conference attendees. For an idea of past papers that have been submitted and presented, please see this ESPN story on John Huizinga and Sandy Weil's paper on whether the hot hand exists. More conference info is available at our newly re-launched website."
• Jeff Green had a big scoring night. Here's a fairly deep look at how he has scored in the NBA: Is he a post-up guy? A 3-point shooter? A mid-range shooter? He's not amazing from any of those places ...
• Portland is going nuts for Wesley Matthews.
• Is Marcus Thornton's defense so bad that Marco Belinelli would play ahead of him?
• Repeated butt-slapping will not be tolerated. Are we clear?
• The Lakers lost to Barcelona, but it wasn't exactly Ricky Rubio who beat them.

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