Much to the dismay of Blazers and Celtics fans everywhere, this is Kurt from Forum Blue and Gold back filling in for Henry today. Even if you can't stand the Lakers, you can still send me an email with an idea or suggestion.

Even for the most avid NBA fans, there is a pretty big wall between them and the players. If you're reading this site you likely are one of those fans, you probably watch a fair amount of games and know a little something about basketball. But if, for example, you're a Lakers fan and want to know what Phil Jackson or Trevor Ariza said about strategy for tonight's game against the Utah Jazz, you hoped beat writers like Mike Bresnahan (LA Times) or Kevin Ding (Orange County Register) were given enough room to tell you.

Not any more -- go to the Lakers Web site and you can watch almost nine minutes of interviews after yesterday's practice with a number of Lakers as well as Jackson. These are the same interviews that the beat writers are getting their quotes and information from, but you can watch them unfiltered.

"After going to a few practices and hearing the conversations first hand I was surprised by how different they came out in the next day's paper," said Ty Nowell, Website Content Manager for the Lakers. "Our beat guys do a pretty good job of staying true to what is said, but there's still so much that can get lost in the translation, so we started posting the raw audio on the site for everyone to listen to."

Now the Lakers post video a few hours after every home practice and game (plus some road games), and Los Angeles is far from alone. Almost every team now has full time writers for their Web site and also are putting up some video, all of this aiming to do what the Internet does best - tear down walls of separation. Team sites are adapting to the Web in a way that newspapers and most other traditional media are not right now.

"From a practical standpoint, we're not sharing space with other sports in a newspaper -- we're all Sonics all the time. That allows us to cater to hard-core fans a little more, especially in terms of off-season coverage," said Kevin Pelton, a full time writer for SuperSonics.com, who does the Sonics Beat blog. "It's interesting that, as beat writer blogs have become ubiquitous, their coverage has begun to look a little more like ours in that regard."

Blogs on the team's official site are pretty common now, and those blogs are linking to and quoting fan blogs and sites in a way that other media don't - again taking a brick or two out of the wall. Plus, teams are using their blogs to tell stories that the mainstream media beat writers are not.

"One of the main benefits of having a blog as part of our coverage is to draw attention to some of the minor stories and notes that might not merit a full article but are still interesting -- for example, the other day we had an entry about the history of the Sonics on Christmas Day leading up to the match up with Portland," Pelton said. "It's especially helpful in the summer to keep an eye on how players are spending their off-seasons.

The push for expanded team Web sites is starting up at the top of team management, although several people I spoke to said the teams are turning to the tech guys and writers for ideas at the same time. Plus, the teams are turning to those old, gray papers to steal writers and others to give them quality content. The Trail Blazers just hired Casey Holdahl away from Oregonlive.com, where he had a Blazers blog, and now he will write for the team site. The Sonics hired Ron Matthews, the former sports editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as Director of Digital Media and Publications. And that's just two of many. The print people are moving into the less restrictive world of online writing -- no space constraints -- and they are helping the sites break out of the standard fare fans are used to.

For example, the Lakers are doing an Xs and Os scouting report on opposing teams prepared by Director of Video Services/Scout, Chris Bodaken. The reports (available with registration) give you the kind of sets the other team likes to run - for example, look for the Phoenix Suns to run "drags (high screen-and-rolls in transition or early in the clock) or "double drags. Sometimes there are simple diagrams of sets or video breakdowns, especially the handful of plays that are very common in the Association.

"Like with the post-practice videos we're just trying to create a better understanding of the team and the game for the fans. The main goal is to help fans recognize the patterns in the game so the chaos makes more sense..." Nowell said. "The scouting report gives you the ability to recognize a certain pattern of movement and anticipate the action. Often times he provides us the same diagrams and/or clips of plays that the players and coaches are given. I don't know any other place to see specific plays broken down like that."

Those kind of video and scouting breakdowns exist, sites like Synergy Sports have them and for a healthy fee give that wisdom to teams (and the occasional blogger like Henry of this site), but the average fan can't see them. Nor can the average fan or blogger get to have lunch with and pick the brain of David Thorpe or other NBA experts.

But with the advent of sites like 82games, plus the growth of video and blogs on team sites, some of those walls to information and inside analysis are coming down. We don't have to wait for the next morning's paper to know what is going on, and we have facts that can prove Bill Walton is just wrong if he says Lamar Odom is a good three point shooter (22.9% this season, 29.7% last season). And in coming years, the amount of video and interactive media on team sites is only going to grow.

All in all, it's just a few less bricks in the wall.