An interesting piece in Salon attempts to answer a question that's been on the minds of sports fans for some time:

To use the title of the bestselling book about the A's success for want of a better shorthand term: Where is the "Moneyball" revolution in the NBA?

This question goes for the NFL, NHL and other sports, too. But for basketball, the piece rightly points out that it's difficult to ape the same approach Bill James and Billy Beane mastered.

There's no denying that comparing basketball to baseball doesn't get you very far. That's because both sides of the "Moneyball" equation are very different in basketball than they are on the diamond.

"The science of basketball is not as consistent as baseball," says Dean Oliver, author of "Basketball on Paper," which uses Bill James-style, or sabermetric, statistical analysis on the NBA. Oliver and others who do this type of work point out that baseball is far easier to measure because most of what needs to be measured comes down a series of one-on-one confrontations between the pitcher and batter. Basketball is a flowing, team game, and it's difficult to figure out how much credit to assign to each player on the floor for a made basket or a defensive stop.

"I hear that when I talk to NBA people," Oliver says. "When I raise the fact that 'Moneyball' is working in baseball, they say, 'Baseball is very different than basketball.' And they're right."

All that's true so far as it goes, but I think a lot more can be done in psychological profiling for sports like the NBA, the kind of psychological profiling Mike Flanagan and the Baltimore Orioles are doing. Talented players are plentiful. But so are headcases. Kwame Brown, anyone? There has to be some way to refine tests that will help you determine when a great talent but potential disaster like Allen Iverson will become the Answer and when he'll become the questionable choice that gets a GM fired.