Last week we had a question that I wanted to get to, but didn't have a chance until today. David wrote:

"After seeing LeBron drop 44 and Wade drop 34 in the game today, I was wondering when was the last time two players on the same team both scored 40+?"

Our box score database goes back to 1986-87 -- 1991 for the playoffs -- so we have three games on hand where two teammates scored 40+ points in the same game (and oddly enough, two took place in the postseason):

• Utah at Houston, May 5, 1995. Facing elimination in Game 4 of the 1995 West quarters, the Rockets got exactly the kind of performance they envisioned when they acquired Clyde Drexler to pair with Hakeem Olajuwon. Glide dropped 41, Dream poured in 40, and Houston dominated 123-106. Two nights later, Olajuwon & Drexler combined for 64 points to put Utah away, and they went on to power the team's 2nd consecutive NBA title bid that June.
• Chicago at Indiana, February 18, 1996. For the Bulls, this was just one of 72 victories in a landmark 1996 campaign that still stands as the most successful in NBA history. Fresh off the All-Star break, Chicago took their 36th win in their last 39 games when Michael Jordan (44 points) and Scottie Pippen (40) combined for more than 76% of the team's scoring output all by themselves.
• Philadelphia at Indiana, May 6, 2000. This time, Indiana was on the giving end of the scoring outbursts, as Jalen Rose and Reggie Miller each tallied 40 apiece during a 108-91 win over the Sixers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semis. The Pacers would go on to take the series in 6 games, eventually advancing to the NBA Finals before running into a Laker buzz saw.

BBR reader Prashant wrote in with a good question yesterday:

"I just read John Hollinger’s article about the sustained success of the Spurs and Mavs and was wondering if there was any way to calculate the average deviation of a given team’s record over time? Basically, which teams are the most consistently good/bad/average over a set timeframe, say a decade? I would imagine the Spurs/Mavs/Clippers are atop that list, while the Celtics and Heat probably have a pretty wild deviation (from lottery team to title contender)."

Sure, the easiest way to look at this is to calculate the standard deviation of each franchise's year-to-year winning percentages over the given timeframe.

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2010-11 NBA power rankings through the games played on January 13, 2011:

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This week in the NYT, I take a look at the disparity between the best and worst teams:

Keeping Score: N.B.A.’s Haves and Have-Nots

The column appears in this morning's print edition as well.

As a follow-up to their post about minute-weighted team age, Hoopism took the advice of our commenters and re-ran team ages, this time weighted by Win Shares:

Mapping Average Age to Success in the NBA

Comparing side-by-side with the raw roster averages, this has the effect of allowing you to see which teams' most productive players skew especially young (Miami, Orlando, LA Clippers) or old (Phoenix, Boston, Houston).

SI's Zach Lowe has an illuminating post about one reason the 2011 Cavs are struggling so much:

"The Cavaliers are on pace to be the worst defenders of the three-point shot in league history. As we reach the midway point of the season, Cleveland’s opponents have hit 42.4 percent of their threes — by far the highest mark in the league.

...

Since the league instituted the three-point line in the 1979-80 season, only one team has allowed opponents to shoot 40 percent or better through an entire season, according to Basketball-Reference: the 2008-09 Kings, who allowed opponents to shoot 40.6 percent from deep."

Yikes. And to make matters worse, Zach goes on to provide evidence that one of the talents LeBron James took to South Beach was... you guessed it, the ability to hamper an opponent's long-range game.

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And who knows, if you're clever enough, your message might end up on lists like these.

Since there's a certain primacy to players who required fewer "ballots" for Hall of Fame induction, here is everyone in the Basketball Hall of Fame who played in the NBA/ABA/BAA, sorted by the fewest years between their final NBA/ABA/BAA season and the HoF class in which they were inducted:

This is not necessarily a list of players with the shortest time between retirement from basketball and HoF induction. In most cases, "retirement from the NBA/ABA/BAA" and "retirement from basketball" are the same thing, but it's possible for a player to delay his eligibility by playing in a minor league after retiring from the "majors".

¹ - Cousy initially retired in 1963, which would have made him eligible for the Class of 1969. However, he returned to the NBA with the Royals for 7 games in 1969-70. After re-retiring, he maintained his earlier eligibility from 1969.
² - Inducted before HoF established the 5-year waiting period.
³ - Baylor played 9 games before retiring early in the 1971-72 season, so for the Hall of Fame's purposes he was eligible in 1977.

In BBR news, Justin has added Facebook "Like" buttons to all player pages — meaning you can, at long last, declare your affection for guys like Terry Dischinger or Mookie Blaylock.

Have fun, and feel free to even go a little crazy with this...

Good visualization here from Hoopism:

Who is the Oldest Team in The NBA? 2010-2011

They give both the raw average of the entire roster, and the average weighted by minutes played, with a line indicating the change as a result of the different weighting. For instance, the Bulls have a lot of veterans on the team, but give more minutes to their younger players; conversely, the Cavs have a lot of young players, but give more PT to their older players.

(H/T: TrueHoop.)