As I learned from reading Jackie MacMullan’s When the Game Was Ours , the night after winning a title with the Celtics in 1986, Bill Walton spent the night alone, in someone else’s kitchen, listening to the Grateful Dead and sipping Wild Turkey. Whose kitchen was it?

Jesse Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty Images The Celtics are among Kobe Bryant’s seven 2009-2010 victims. Through the years, there have been many different sets of data about clutch shooting . Any which way I have ever seen it sliced (last five minutes of close games to last ten seconds), as I have written on TrueHoop before, it has looked like Kobe Bryant has been a guy who shoots a ton in crunch time, and hits at a pretty good, but not elite, rate

In addition to the lively panels, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference features the presentation of research papers by up-and-coming thinkers in the field. Brian Robb of Celtics Hub attended one such presentation today, “Whistle Swallowing: Officiating & the Omission Bias.” An omission bias can best be defined as a referee’s willingness to make an incorrect call rather than make an incorrect non-call. Robb explains the nut of the findings by Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim, who wrote the paper: So where does the NBA fit into this type of bias?

Photo: John Marcus Mark Cuban and Avery Johnson It’s one thing for an NBA organization to commit itself to collecting and analyzing advanced statistics, but it’s quite another to get the coaching staff to buy in. Zach Lowe of Celtics Hub attended the panel on Saturday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on coaching analytics. Lowe reports that much of the discussion on the panel focused on the Dallas Mavericks’ playoffs successes and failures while Avery Johnson implemented the findings of Wayne Winston, who was working for the Mavs as a consultant: Before [Avery] Johnson was hired in Dallas, he says, the basic box score “was my Bible.” He never thought beyond the basic stats — points in the paint, field-goal percentage, free throw differential

Michael Finley says he has agreement to join the Boston Celtics.

David Dow/NBAE/Getty Images It’s unclear if any team would offer Iverson — voted an All-Star starter — a minimum contract. Today the 76ers confirmed what has been whispered for some time: Allen Iverson won’t be back in a Sixers uniform this season

Center Brook Lopez scored 25 points and guards Devin Harris and Courtney Lee added 23 and 21 points and the New Jersey Nets topped the Boston Celtics 104-96 Saturday.

It is now clear that miracles do happen. Saturday’s stunning 104-96 win over Boston proved that much for the league’s worst team and 18,624 flabbergasted fans as the Nets snapped a 12-game losing streak against the Celtics.

Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers: Paul Pierce out against Cleveland Cavaliers Thursday.

Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images Sport Kevin Garnett leads the league in physical contact. Almost every way I tried to write the headline of this post, I could imagine it becoming a punchline on Deadspin