1. I got a number of e-mails regarding the Hot Hand study presented at the 2009 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this past weekend, and now we have more information available for those who are interested -- one of the co-presenters, Sandy Weil, posted all the slides from the presentation here, so folks can see exactly the phenomenon we're talking about.
As you can tell from the rigor of the presentation, they considered a lot of alternate hypotheses about why a player might exhibit this data and then were able to rule them out one by one.
What's so interesting is that virtually every e-mail I received offered some alternate theory as to why the Hot Hand really exists even though research shows it doesn't. Obviously, it's extremely difficult to offer 100 percent proof that something doesn't exist, but this presentation comes about as close as you can get.
In other words, the burden of proof clearly has shifted. Until we're offered some kind of evidence as to how or why the Hot Hand might exist, the default, conventional-wisdom position now should be that it doesn't ... and that continued belief in its existence is causing players to make suboptimal offensive decisions.
Wade
2. OK, let's talk about Dwyane Wade. In the wake of his epic performance against the Bulls on Monday night, he has moved past Chris Paul into second place in the league Player Efficiency Rating standings and is making a hard charge at No. 1 LeBron James.
James has been my default choice for MVP all season long, but Wade is making things really interesting. In the PER column, James (31.25) now is barely ahead of Wade (30.51); shockingly, Wade also has played more minutes, having not missed a game all season. And in terms of on-court versus off-court differential, Wade (plus-17.1 per 100 possessions) is one of the few players in the same orbit as James (plus-25.5).
But as amazing as Wade has been, here's what's even more amazing: His teammates are bad enough that the Heat are just 20th in the Power Rankings. Miami has allowed more points than it has scored this season and is fortunate to be five games over .500 right now; that record is likely to take a step back in the coming days as the Heat face Boston and Utah next before going on the road for six of the following seven.
3. The Playoff Odds have been consistently favoring the Cavs to finish ahead of the Lakers in the standings, and Monday night showed a good example why. It's not that L.A. was blown off the floor by Portland; it's that the Lakers have a string of very difficult road games remaining.
L.A. now goes to Texas for a back-to-back against Houston and San Antonio. And it might be without Lamar Odom for the first of those two games after he left the bench in Monday's scuffle with the Blazers -- which leaves a sizable hole in the Lakers' rotation against a team that's given them fits in recent seasons.
(OK, my take on Trevor Ariza -- he tried to make a play on the ball but made a stupid, dangerous decision to go after it so hard in a 30-point game.)
The Lakers still have a seven-game Eastern swing coming up after this, as well as another visit to what's likely to be a very angry Portland crowd April 10. They're good enough to win most of their games, but the difficulty is great enough that the Odds project a 13-6 finish that leaves them two games behind the Cavs.
4. Incidentally, Portland's home-court advantage has become as big as that of any team in the league. The Blazers moved to 27-5 at the Rose Garden with Monday night's win, putting them behind only L.A. and Cleveland in defending their home turf, and in the past 10 days, they've blown both San Antonio and the Lakers off the floor. Monday also was the Blazers' 12th straight win in Portland; even the blemish that preceded it -- a 104-98 loss to Cleveland -- was hardly embarrassing.
The flip side of this, however, is a 13-18 road record. It's not just that seven of the other eight Western contenders have better road marks than the Blazers, it's that lesser teams like New Jersey and Philadelphia do, too.
Obviously, geography probably plays a role here -- given the long distances involved in their travel, I don't think it's an accident that Portland and Utah have the league's two greatest home-road splits. (It also makes you wonder what will happen if there's ever a European division -- will Paris be 38-3 at home and 1-40 on the road?)
What's interesting is that both teams will need to win on the road in order to win the Northwest Division, where they currently are tied. Utah has 12 of its final 19 games on the road, while the Blazers close with 10 of 17 away after this week's home games against Dallas and New Jersey.
Fortunately for the Blazers, the most important one in the bunch is at home -- March 31, their final game against the Jazz. It won't surprise you to learn that the home team has won all three meetings thus far.
5. Denver's slide continues, as Monday night's loss to Houston makes it eight defeats in its past 11 games. To an extent, I think this team is finding its level -- inevitably, the lack of frontcourt depth was going to come back and bite the Nuggets at some point, and it has happened these past couple of weeks as Kenyon Martin deals with a bad back and the schedule does them few favors.
Fans might be surprised to see the Nuggets' Playoff Odds remaining at a robust 97.6 percent, but they have nine home games left against losing teams. Even if they win only seven of those and lose all their other games (including road contests in Memphis and Minnesota), they'd be likely to get into the playoffs with 47 wins.
But while we can rule out a catastrophe, there's some bad news on the horizon, too. Denver needs to rack up a few wins just to get itself out of the seventh position the West, because with that comes a very familiar and unpleasant situation -- a first-round pairing against San Antonio, which already has knocked out Denver twice in that situation in the past three years. For a club that's trying to end its five-year string of first-round exits, that's not the pairing it's hoping for.
John Hollinger writes for ESPN Insider. To e-mail him, click here.