What Kind of Royals Will Anaheim Get?

Earlier today, KXTV News of Sacramento reported that an organization with Sacramento connections has filed applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office reserving the names "Anaheim Royals" and "Sacramento Royals". They also stated that

The web domains losangelesroyals.com and anaheimroyals.com have also been registered within the past three weeks.

The trademark applications were filed on behalf of Crickets Corp., a Nevada corporation represented by Sacramento attorney Scott Hervey. Hervey specializes in intellectual property issues and also represents the Maloof family, owners of the Sacramento Kings and the Palms Casino in Las Vegas.

The Maloof family is part of the ownership group of the NBA's Sacramento Kings. The filed trademarks demonstrate that Kings ownership is considering moving the Kings to Anaheim.

Further research of trademark applications also show that Mr. Hervey has filed a previous trademark application for the "Maloof Cup World Championship of Skateboarding", indicating direct connections to the Maloof brothers.  In addition to the two patents mentioned in the KXTV article, Mr. Hervey has also filed applications for trademarks for the titles "Orange County Royals" and "Anaheim Royals of Southern California", although it is customary to file extra trademarks as red herrings to conceal the identity of the planned name.

The Sacramento Kings were originally named the Rochester Royals, before moving to Cincinnati.  Their move to Kansas City prompted the name change to 'Kings', so as not to be confused with baseball's Kansas City Royals.  In a bit of history repeating (and reversing back on) itself, it is thought that the Kings will change their name back to Royals to avoid conflict with the NHL's Los Angeles Kings.

In a separate and previous transaction, NBA Properties, using a correspondent other than Mr. Hervey, had a review for the trademark name "Anaheim Amigos" completed in February.  However, it appears to focus on merchandise instead of sporting events.

See the information below on the applications for each trademarked name:

• Orange County Royals 
• Anaheim Royals 
• Anaheim Royals of Southern California 
• Los Angeles Royals 
• Maloof Cup World Championship of Skateboarding
• Anaheim Amigos 

An Area Where Deron Williams Doesn't Help the Nets

The New Jersey Nets added one of the premier point guards in the NBA when they traded for Deron Williams. Williams belongs to the upper echelon of floor leaders, which includes the likes of Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo, Russell Westbrook, and Derrick Rose.  Replacing Devin Harris with Deron should prove to be a sizable upgrade.
But even if acquiring Deron Williams improves the Nets, there are problems that he does not solve, including the fact that starting center Brook Lopez (12.5%) collects defensive rebounds at nearly the same rate as Sasha Vujacic (11.8%).  Point guards do not usually impact rebounding, though, so Deron may not help much there.  There is another area, though, where point guards do make a difference:  turnovers.  The league leaders in steals, for example, are point (or combo) guards.  Rondo, Paul, Monta Ellis, Mike Conley, and Westbrook fill out the NBA's top-5 leaderboard in steals per game.  Will getting Deron Williams help them get turnovers and steals?

An Odd Statistical Quirk and a Huge Advantage for the Thunder

One way to measure the effectiveness of a team's ability to draw fouls and successfully shoot free throws is to look at their ratio of free throws made to field goal attempts (FT/FGA).  By using FG attempts in the denominator, this ratio largely negates the impact of pace. This statistic also takes into account accuracy of each team's free throw shooters, by counting free throws instead of free throw attempts.

Through the NBA games played March 8, the league average for this ratio was 0.231.  The average number of free throws made was 1188, the average number of field goal attempts was 5144, and the resulting quotient gives the number listed above.

The interesting quirk lies in comparing the league average to each of the NBA's 30 teams.  When each team is compared to this 0.231 mark, only nine teams are above the league average.  That's right -- there are 21 teams performing below the league average in this index.  How can that happen? It turns out that way because there are a few squads that sit significantly higher than even the above-average teams.  Here are the nine teams (note the outliers pulling up the average on the high end):

The Celtics: Looking at the Numbers on Pairing a Center with the Big Four

On the night of the Kendrick Perkins trade, Danny Ainge made some intriguing statements regarding Shaq's role replacing for Perkins.  His remarks indicated that he understood the simple analysis of the situation -- the Celtics went 33-10 before Perkins' return to the team.  His words, however, also implied the team's usage of more advanced, lineup-based analytics:

Shaq has proved to be excellent with our starters.  The numbers actually show that he has been better with our starters.  We beat all the good teams in the league while Kendrick was out.