Pilight has some thoughts about the NBA-WNBA comparison. His theory: the NBA has more depth, the NBA has better coaches, the women play better defense, and the NBA refs call more shooting fouls, which results in easier shooting.

All of those factors probably contribute. The only one I'm not sure about is the defense. I don't think looking at Team USA is a fair comparison -- that was a thrown-together team that had a cast of unusually bad defensive players (save Duncan, of course). Pilight says that "anyone that regularly watches NBA games should be able to tell" that they don't know how to play defense.

Well, I watch at least five NBA games per week during the season (yes, it's far too much time in front of the TV), and I don't see that. The truly great players in the NBA are great defenders -- Shaq, Garnett, Duncan. So was Jordan. The great teams in the NBA are great defensive teams.

Detroit is a defense-first team, and that strategy got it a championship. For the last few years, Dallas was an offense-first team. They had tons of scoring and lots of pretty plays, but they could never get deep into the playoffs, so they finally gave up and decided to get some defenders like Dampier. Now they might be a real threat.

Obviously, there is plenty of bad defense in the NBA. Defenders leave their feet too much; they don't have their hands up enough; they don't position themselves properly; they don't block out; they deny with the wrong hand, etc. But that's true in the W as well.

I can't think of any good way to measure this, so we're left only with subjective impressions. Are the W's turnovers the result of good defense or bad offense? We'll never be able to answer that definitively, but whatever the cause, I'd like to see fewer of them.