{flickr/Youssef Abdelaal}

Okay, so Ted Leonsis already has one quality that’s in high demand from sports fans … transparency. How many other professional sports team owners have a personal blog where they actually share candid opinion and not boring, patronizing fluff?

Now, more and more, Leonsis is expressing interest in other areas of concern for educated sports fans, especially Wizards fans … advanced statistics.

If you’ll recall, Leonsis proclaimed his belief in basketball analytics on The Mike Wise Show on 106.7 FM in early April. More recently, he reiterated his belief in statistical analysis in an interview with CSN Washington’s Russ Thaler.

Today, on his blog Ted’s Take, Leonsis recommends two books on sports statistics. One is Stumbling On Wins: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports by Dave Berri and Martin Schmidt  (a book for which I held a contest to win on this very site, winners to be announced soon). The second recommendation is Mathematics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Basketball, Basketball, and Football by Wayne L. Winston (a big plus/minus guy who’s served as Mark Cuban’s stat guru for the Mavericks).

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{Scenes from last night in Cleveland}

I couldn’t exactly get inside the brains of the Washington Wizards, but my imagination did.

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