Let me tell you, after months of boredom and little to write about during maybe the worst sports summer on record, it's great to have some exciting things going on in sports.So, instead of hearing about Mike Vick for the 100th time in a single day, we have NFL and college football, playoff races in baseball, trade demands in the NBA and, as if we needed it, more scandals.

- I'm torn about the Kirilenko trade demand. On one hand, I hate it when players who aren't franchise guys get paid max money, and then whine. However, those players are usually whining because their teams aren't doing well, and the reason is because their salary has handcuffed the team (Jermaine O'Neal, for example). That's not the case with AK-47 (which is, btw, the best nickname in the league). He's on a winning team, but he's incredibly frustrated by the fact that Jerry Sloan refuses to utilize his talents. So, despite the fact that I hate seeing highly paid guys demand stuff, I would love to see AK get traded to a team that will utilize him, because he's one of the more unique talents in the league. I've seen a lot of trade scenarios proposed, but I'm not buying the AK for Shawn Marion deal or any trade to Golden State. There's really only one team I see as a good fit who also has the contracts and players to offer in return, and shockingly I haven't seen it proposed anywhere.

Andrei Kirilenko to Memphis for Mike Miller and Stromile Swift: Seriously, who wouldn't want to make this deal? It's an easy call for the Jazz, they get some cap relief in the long term, and they get the perfect complement to the Williams/Boozer pick and roll tandem. Miller is one of the best pure shooters in the NBA, and is far more suited to the standard Jerry Sloan offense than Kirilenko is. For Memphis, they get maybe the most dynamic defender in the NBA, and a guy who is excellent in a transition, international-style offense. Memphis coach Marc Iavaroni comes from the Phoenix group of coaches, and is installing a similar up-tempo offense. Memphis, who is my dark horse pick for next year, would have a lineup of Lowry/Conley, Navarro, AK, Gasol, and Darko. Would you want to face that? This deal needs to happen.

- You know, I've reached the point that nothing Isiah Thomas does would surprise me. If it weren't for OJ, I'd say that Isiah has ruined his reputation more than any other former star athlete. Since he stopped playing, he's manage to destroy the CBA, underachieve as coach of the Pacers, completely destroy the Knicks franchise for the forseeable future, and get mixed up in a sexual harassment scandal that has made he and the Knicks organization look stupid and bigoted. This begs the question, "How does the man still have a job???" Look, I know he's a legend as a player, and yeah, he's a pretty decent evaluator of talent, but he's a complete and total failure as an executive. Isiah, for the sake of basketball fans everywhere and for the sake of your legacy, step down and leave the spotlight before you completely ruin all memory of your playing days.

As a side note, this whole Isiah trial has confirmed what we already know about Stephon Marbury, mainly that he's certifiably crazy. Really, it's been a real breakout summer in the crazy department for Starbury. I can't wait for the season, I have a feeling he's going to end up doing something completely absurd and unheard of. I don't know what, I just feel something coming.

- Moving out of the NBA and into late-season baseball, the AL looks all sown up, but we've still got legitimate races in all 3 divisions and in the wild card in the NL. This is where baseball gets good, because every game matters.

The Mets held off the hard-charging Phillies for at least one game behind a brilliant outing by Oliver Perez. Let me tell you this, Perez has had his problems with inconsistency, but his stuff is as good as anybody in baseball. He was dealing today, and everything was nasty.  He made some hitters just look silly.

The Brewers lost what was probably the most important game of their season, despite a very good outing by their young stud Yovani Gallardo, who has really impressed me with the way he carries himself. He has great composure for a rookie to go along with his nasty stuff. After he gave up a walk and a single in the first inning, he faced Chipper-Teixera-McCann with runners on first and third and managed to get out of it with allowing just one run. In the next 6 innings, he struck out 7 and allowed 2 hits to match John Smoltz's great outing. Despite the extra-innings loss that probably spelled doom for the Brew Crew's playoff hopes, it was an impressive outing by the rookie.

- Switching gears yet again, did you see Matt Flynn over-the-head flip to Colt David on LSU's fake filed goal??? That might be the coolest play all year. Seriously, that was awesome.

-Say what you want about Florida's close call with Old Miss, but I can't get over the line that Tim Tebow put up. 261 yards and 2 TDs through the air, and 166 yards and 2 TDs on the ground (that gives him 17 TDs, 1 INT, 0 FUM through 4 games). Really, I just love this guy, he's totally unique. Typically when you think "running quarterback" you think the Mike Vick-type speed guy who makes quick moves to get some yardage and usually ends up sliding or running out of bounds (Pat White is a good example this year), but that's not Tebow. He doesn't have the mind-blowing speed or tricky moves of those guys, he runs like a fullback. Tebow doesn't avoid contact, he initiates it. Who knows how long he'll last playing that way, but it's a lot of fun to watch a guy who runs like he does.

- I don't know if anyone else caught this, but I watched the very end of the Georgia-Alabama game and was completely dumbfounded by one of the announcers. I don't even know who was calling the game, but near the end of an extremely close, hard-fought game that went into overtime, during a stop in play one of the announcers asked the other completely out of the blue "what do you think Britney should do?" The other announcer, very confused, asked "Britney who?", and got a reply of "Britney Spears". To this he very rightly responded "who cares, we've got a freaking overtime game going on here, pay attention stupid" (ok, so I made that last part up a bit). Seriously though, what the #### was that? It was so absurd and out of place that I wasn't sure I heard it right. Did anyone else catch this?

- Lastly, the NFL. I must say this; I really dislike Terrell Owens. He's cocky, selfish, and acts like a diva. That said, his touchdown celebration and subsequent response to the NFL's fine were absolutely genius. That might never be topped, it was just sheer genius.

- The game I'm watching this week is Packers-Chargers, and I'm torn on who I want to see come out on top. On one hand, I'm a huge LT fan, and I absolutely love my NC State boy Phil Rivers (who had a seriously underrated college career). However, my grandparents are from Wisconsin and my Grandpa taught me to be a Packers fan. I love watching a rejuvenated Favre this year and I'd love to see them do well. I don't know who I'll be rooting for, but I'll definitely be watching that one, should be a good game.

- 35 days and counting until college basketball gets going, I can't wait.

Analyze This

I am a statistics geek. There, I said it, it's out there for everyone to see. I see PPG and OBP in my sleep. I'm obsessed with analyzing players through statistics. The sports world is a-changin, and if you want to keep up, you better know all about B/40 (Blocks per 40 minutes), YAC (Yards After Contact), OPS (On-base Plus Slugging), BABiP (Batting Average on Balls in Play), and eFG% (Effective Field Goal Percentage). So, with that in mind, I'm going to look over some of the common statistics in sports and find out what the strengths and weaknesses of those particular statistics are. In addition, I'll look at some of the less common statistics that you may not have heard of. Due to the vast amount of statistics there are to look at, I think I'll probably make this a running thing where I'll do a post every week or so with more statistics. That is, unless people think this is a stupid idea, then I won't do it and just go cry in my closet instead, so let me know what you think. Anyway, for this time I'm just going to look over some basic, commonly used statistics.

BA (Batting Average)

What Is It?
Batting Average is a baseball statistic that measures the ratio of hits to at bats.

How Is It Useful?
BA has long been the standard measurement of a hitter's performance, and it makes sense. The more hits a player gets when he's up to bat, the better a hitter he is, right? In general, it usually is a pretty good predictor of a how good a hitter is, with a BA over .300 being pretty good, over .350 being top-notch, under .250 being pretty bad, and under .200 (the Mendoza line, named for famously poor-hitting SS Mario Mendoza) being absolutely terrible.

What Are Its Flaws?
BA really has 2 major flaws. The first flaw is that it doesn't account for walks. For example, when evaluating a leadoff hitter, whose purpose is to get on base any way possible, BA tells you that Willy Taveras (.320 BA) and Dustin Pedroia (.322) are basically equal. However, Pedroia has drawn a walk 13 more times in 30 fewer ABs, meaning he gets on base at a significantly higher percentage than Taveras. The second problem is that BA treats all hits as equal, whether it's a bunt single or a home run. Lets take a look at the case of Prince Fielder (.278) vs. Juan Pierre (.280). Again, very similar batting averages. However, Fielder has 58 EBH (Extra Base Hits, i.e. doubles, triples, HRs) to Pierre's 17 EBH. Obviously, Fielder's power makes him the more effective hitter, but BA doesn't show that. The answer to these two problems, of course, is to use BA in conjunction with OBP (On Base Percentage) and SLG (Slugging Percentage) in order to analyze a player.

SB (Stolen Bases)

What Is It?
Pretty obvious, it's the number of bases a player has stolen.

How Is It Useful?
Well, it tells you which guys are speedy on the basepaths. Guys with lots of stolen bases usually make better top-of-the-order guys (if they can couple it with a decent OBP), and they can rattle pitchers when they're on base simply because of the chance they might steal.

What Are Its Flaws?
Stolen bases is kind of a sneaky statistic in that it looks very simple at first, but has a lot more flaws than it appears. The first flaw of the SB statistic is that if a player who isn't a good baserunner tries to steal a lot, he'll probably get a decent number of steals, but he'll also get caught a lot. For instance, would you rather have Juan Pierre (33 SB in 42 attempts) or Shane Victorino (27 SB in 29 attempts)? The best solution is to look at SB% (Stolen Base Percentage, SB/(SB+CS)) to see how useful a player is when stealing bases. Keep in mind, however, that an out is far more important than an advance from first to second, so the percentage needs to be much higher than 50% for a basestealer to actually be useful. In fact, statistics have shown that on average, if you're successful less than 75% of the time, you're actually hurting your team more than helping it.

BPG (Blocks Per Game)

What Is It?
A measurement for the number of shots a basketball player blocks on average each game (Total Blocks/Games Played)

How Is It Useful?
A high BPG average is usually indicative o####ood post defender. An average above 2.5 is usually very good for a post player, and anything above the low-1s is good for a guard.

What Are Its Flaws
As with all per game statistics in basketball, it suffers from not taking into account the number of minutes played. For example, Jermaine O'Neal averaged 2.6 blocks last year compared to Alonzo Mourning's 2.3. Thos look pretty comparable, with O'Neal having the slight edge. However, O'Neal averaged 15 minutes more per game than Mourning did, which puts Mourning's per minute average at a whole different level. The other flaw with blocks is that, well, it's just not a very good measure of whether you're a good defender or not. Players who block a lot of shots often do so by losing rebounding position to try for a block, and they often get in foul trouble by attempting blocks. Also, very good shot blockers tend to see their block numbers drop as players realize how good they are and decide to try and avoid them. If you watched an Ohio State game last year, you could see this happen as teams were very hesitant to go into the post against Greg Oden. So, what do we make of the blocks statistic then? Well, whenever evaluating a player by their blocked shots, be sure to incorporate fouls and rebounds into your equation. If a player has a high block per foul rate and they still rebound the defensive glass well, then they're probably a pretty good post defender. It's a little simpler for guards, since any shotblocking you get from them is an added bonus. If you see a guard/forward with high block numbers (like Gerald Wallace), that probably means they're a pretty strong defender.

FG% (Field Goal Percentage)

What Is It?
A basketball measurement of how many field goals (any shot that isn't a free throw) you make per field goals you attempt (FGM/FGA)

How Is It Useful?
It's very useful when trying to analyze a player's effectiveness as a scorer. Players who have a higher FG% are typically better shooters and therefore more efficient scorers. For example, Kobe Bryant has averaged 24.6 points per game in his career to Allen Iverson's 27.9 . However, Kobe's FG% is 30 points higher than Iverson's, indicating that he is the more efficient scorer of the two.

What Are Its Flaws?
Mainly that it doesn't account for the difference between post players and guards. Post players regularly put up FG%s of over 60%, since the vast majority of their shots are right around the rim. Guards, on the other hand, are much more likely to be launching more difficult shots from further out. One answer to this is eFG% (Effective Field Goal Percentage), which weighs three-pointers as 50% more important than 2-pointers [(FG + 0.5*3P) / FGA]. eFG% is in general a much better all-around measurement than straight-up FG%, and generally what I use when analyzing players.

Sacks

What Is It?
A football measurement for how many times a player tackles an opposing quarterback behind the line of scrimmage.

How Is It Useful?
It's a good way to measure how well a player (usually a defensive end) can get into the backfield and make plays. Double-digit sacks are very good for a defensive end/outside linebacker, and anything in the upper single-digits is pretty good for any other defensive position.

What Are Its Flaws?
Hmmm, where to start? Well, first of all, it isn't really a very good indicator of whether or not a player is a good defender, since many rush ends concentrate on the sack at the expense of run defense. In general, TFL (Tackles For Loss) is a better statistic, and total tackles is also something you should take into account. For example, Mark Anderson of the Bears had 12 sacks, but only 28 total tackles. Compare that to Adalius Thomas, who had 11 sacks but 83 total tackles. Who would you rather have? The other thing to note is that sacks may also be the result of a strong secondary (good coverage resulting in the QB hanging on to the ball too long), or the result of a defensive scheme that emphasizes blitzing.

There you go, the first edition of Analyze This, maybe the first of many. Kudos to the first person who can name me all the players executing each statistic in the pictures.