This is a blog about politics, not sports, but I want to briefly recommend The Wages of Wins by David J. Berri, Martin Schmidt, and Stacey Brook. The three authors, who are academic economists, do for basketball and football what Moneyball did for baseball. This is a book that is not to be missed if you’re interested in how empirical analysis can overturn conventional wisdom. For a preview, see Berri’s op-ed in the New York Times yesterday and their excellent blog.