Who Needs Scouts? We Have NBA Live 09!

When an expert isn't handy, Xbox does the job

By KURT HELIN

Updated 5:02 PM EST, Fri, Nov 28, 2008

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Slowly but surely the statistical revolution changes NBA front offices, with numbers per possession defining teams not points per game. And there are companies that can provide video footage of every time Pau Gasol make a dribble drive to his right, with just a couple clicks of your mouse.

So now, teams are turning to NBA Live 09 to see how a trade might change their teams. Diane Pucin of the LA Times got Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey to admit he spends part of his time playing video games.

"Say if you're thinking about acquiring Ron Artest," Morey said from Hawaii, where he was evaluating talent in person at the Maui Classic college tournament.

"On the game, you can see how adding Artest can change the dynamic of your team. You can program it to run offensive sets with Artest and any combination of your players."

The great thing about video games is Morey also can program it to keep Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming healthy for an entire season. Reality is not always so easy to manipulate.

By the way, Lakers fans, don’t worry too much about Phil Jackson sitting around with a controller in his hand trying to get Kobe to dunk over Kurt Rambis’s Dirk Nowitzki. A call this summer to Lakers PR guru John Black to interview the Lakers statistical expert brought this response.

“Phil Jackson doesn’t believe in that.”