Two months ago we couldn’t say for sure that the NBA would have a 2011-2012 campaign, but thanks to the brilliant legal maneuver of hogtying Jeffrey Kessler in a closet, the league is back and along with it is NBA Playbook. While the site will still be producing content for fans and observers to stay more informed about the game they love, they will do so without a familiar face; Sebastian Pruiti.

Thanks to years of hard work and dedication to his craft, Sebastian has taken his talents to Grantland and will be dropping some hoops knowledge under the watchful eye of Bill Simmons. His Shaq-size (metaphorically speaking) shoes will be nearly impossible to fill, but as a fellow hoops tactician masquerading as a writer, I will do my best to capably fill them. Luckily, I will not have to go at it alone as there is a great team of contributors joining me.

Gian Casimiro, formerly of Knickerblogger and currently of Posting and Toasting, will be chipping in with his breakdowns on weekends. Derek Bodner, of DraftExpress and SB Nation Philly fame, will use his experience scouting the amateur ranks to examine the transitions of the young players trying to make their mark in the NBA. Gary Dodds, Director of Business Development and moonlighting analyst/scout for the Texas Legends will also stop by and share his thoughts. Last, but not least, is the infamous (for no other reason than its fun to describe someone as such) Nick Flynt of Clipperblog. Nick brings a wealth of writing and game-watching experience to the group.

Whether you have heard of them or not, you will get to know each of them over the coming months as we break down what will be a season jam-packed with schemes, sets and out-of-shape players. I’m happy to be a part of it and will do my best to keep NBA Playbook humming along at the standards of past years. Any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to email me at Brett@NBAPlaybook.com.

That’s all for now. Let the breakdowns begin.

UPDATE: If you don’t want to continously refresh the Player Scouting Report page or keep checking the sidebar (I won’t be posting every time a player report is completed), you can add this RSS Feed to your favorite RSS reader:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScoutingReports

This way, you will be notified whenever a player scouting report gets added to the database.

As you can probably tell, NBAPlaybook had a little face-lift today.  Wanted to get new theme going for a little while now, so I figured with the holiday that this weekend was the right time to pull the trigger.  Like it?  Hate it?  Send me over an e-mail at sebastian@nbaplaybook.com.

Also, remember my Player Scouting Report page?  If you aren’t familiar with it, last year I said that I was going to try and get a scouting report done for every player in the NBA.  I got 9 done.  Well, with the possibility of missed games and a shortened season, I figured this was a perfect time to get this started again:

Player Scouting Reports

As you can see, I got the international scouting reports and draft pick scouting reports that I have done in the past couple of weeks up there.  I won’t be making an announcement every time that I enter a scouting report into the database, but if you check out the sidebar, there is a section dedicated to the player scouting report database where you can see how many reports are there, the latest players added, and the date it was updated.

I am looking to mix in scouting reports of guys who currently aren’t in the NBA (D-League/International/College players), so if you have any suggestions of who to look at, send over an e-mail to scoutingreports@nbaplaybook.com.

Finally, this offseason isn’t going to be only about scouting reports.  We are going to still be doing the normal NBAPlaybook-type stuff, looking at what kind of impact new coaches can have, continuing the NBA How To series, and other posts as I look to keep the site updated with a new post every weekday.

With yesterday’s posts of coach Carlisle and coach Spoelstra’s coaching performance during the finals complete, we are now done looking specifically at the NBA Finals here at NBAPlaybook.  With the season over (NBAPlaybook’s first full season of posts), that doesn’t mean the content is going to stop here.  Just like last year, we plan to try and still get at least one post up every weekday during the offseason.  Here is what the rest of the week will look like:

• Today: Off-day (Though I will have some stuff up at Basketball Prospectus and The Basketball Jones, will link when they are up)
• Thursday: Looking at San Antonio’s offense when Mike Brown was there, trying to figure out what sets he can bring over to the Lakers
• Friday:  Looking at what Ettore Messina liked to run with his team, seeing if there is anything that he will bring over the Los Angeles.

Next week, we will continue to get posts up looking at this past season and ones that are looking ahead to the upcoming season.  Here are the type of posts you can look forward to during the offseason:

• Can He Bounce Back
• NBA How To
• Overseas Scouting Report
• Looking At What New Coaches Will Bring To New Teams
• 2010-2011 Coach Performance Rankings
• and much more

Now, with the threat of there being an extended offseason due to a lock-out, I am going to need help from you, the reader, if I am going to get a post up every single day.  If you have an idea for a post or a series, don’t hesitate to e-mail me at sebastian@nbaplaybook.com.  I am always looking for things to post about.

Thanks again for reading, everyone.  Hope you continue to check out the site throughout the offseason.

The great Travis Lee, a graphic designer here in New Jersey was kind enough to come up with a fantastic new logo for the site and I thought what better way to celebrate than to throw the logo on some T-Shirts (in addition to working a new theme around it, hopefully coming soon) and offer them up:

This will be the only time I bother you with this link, but the shirts will be for sale over at NBAPlaybook’s SpreadShirt shop, and if you want to find the link, it will be over in the right hand column for now on.

As always, thanks for taking the time out to check out the posts I do here on the site, and whether you check the shirts out, buy one, or not, I appreciate you coming over and reading every day.

So with the season starting tomorrow night, I just thought I would let you guys what to expect from NBA Playbook.  In addition to all the breakdowns (possession/game/performance), looking at offensive and defensive strategies, and just examining the NBA as a whole, I am very excited to announce a new daily feature.

A video breakdown of every game played the night before, starting Wednesday.  This unnamed (I got two days to figure out a name – e-mail or tweet me if you got an idea for it)  daily video will be anywhere from 5-15 minutes and breakdown a certain aspect of every game in the NBA (the goal is to get this up by 9 or 10 AM every morning.  Will probably have trouble doing that for the first week or so as I get the routine down).  I personally like to think of it as a video, more Xs and Os oriented version of Kelly Dwyer’s fantastic Behind The Boxscore (though I am not sure it will ever be that good).

So what does that mean for the other posts?  Nothing really as I don’t expect anything else is going to change.  The posts are still going to be there, and in fact, I am hoping to get more up on a daily basis.  This daily video will be something that is posted in addition.

Today, I’d like to introduce a new feature here at NBAPlaybook.com, and that is player scouting reports.  It’s a little bare right now, and there are only eight player reports (well, seven really, because Jason Collins doesn’t count), but there will hopefully be updates every day, with new players added.  The goal is to finish up a scouting report on every player in the NBA for the upcoming season, but even if that doesn’t happen I hope for this to be a resource fans can come to for information on specific players.  Also, this isn’t something that will keep me from posting here, so don’t worry about that.

Anyway, go ahead and visit the report list and let me know what you think (either in the comments here or via e-mail).  Bookmark it, because it is sure to be updated on a weekly basis.

Before we get to the update, I just wanted to thank everyone who visits NBAPlaybook on a daily basis.  There have been more people coming to/talking about this site than I could ever imagine.  As you probably figured, I won’t be posting this weekend, but starting Monday I am going to do some draft related posts.  After the draft, we are going to move towards free agency.

Also, I am not really sure what my offseason schedule is going to look like (in terms of content), so if any of you out there have any ideas, do not hesitate to e-mail me (sebastian@nbaplaybook.com) or find me on Twitter (twitter.com/sebastianpruiti) and let me know on there.

Thanks again everyone!

Before we get to the playoff schedule, I just wanted to apologize because this is going to be the second day this week without any “true content.”  Earlier this week it was because I was battling illness and just looking at a computer screen was proving to be difficult.  Today you guys aren’t getting anything because with most teams sitting their starters, there wasn’t really any close games worth mentioning.  That and I am working on my playoff previews.  The schedule for the previews are listed below:

Friday

• Denver Nuggets vs. Utah Jazz
• Cleveland Cavs vs. Chicago Bulls
• Atlanta Hawks vs. Milwaukee Bucks
• Boston Celtics vs. Miami Heat

Saturday

• Charlotte Bobcats vs. Orlando Magic
• Phoenix Suns vs. Portland Trailblazers
• San Antonio Spurs vs. Dallas Mavericks
• Oklahoma City Thunder vs. L.A. Lakers

After these previews, we will be doing a ton of new post game stuff (and some of the things we have been doing all year).  So don’t forget to come back here after the games to see what is up.

Here Kevin Arnovitz’s post today on Truehoop:

The fact that these things are knowable — passing shot vs. lob, longer grocery line with a bagger vs. a shorter one without — doesn’t mean they warrant too much attention. Trying to quantify every detail of your waking life is paralyzing.

But the prospect that we might get to know all these things we used to guess at — it’s tantalizing.

And that’s the point of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on Saturday. That’s why I’m on my way there right now, and why TrueHoop and the TrueHoop Network plan to cover it like it’s the Super Bowl. More of that kind of knowledge is in all of our futures — in sports, public policy, Wall Street and maybe even your weekly grocery run.

I am actually in Boston right now, so check the site out tomorrow.  I am going to have some stuff from the conference.