USA Today has moved quickly to beef up its NBA staff after four writers covering pro hoops recently accepted buyouts. We’ve learned that Jon Saraceno has been stripped of his column at the paper, and will be covering the NBA. We emailed him inquiring about the move and he didn’t respond directly to the fact that he’s no longer a columnist. So we’ll probably just have to wait for confirmation elsewhere. We’re not sure when this takes effect, but probably the first week of 2008.

We’re always curious how these decisions are made, and if readers notice. We’ll confess to going to USA Today being our third newspaper website stop each morning, right after the NYT and Washington Post. We usually take a peek at the headline on Saraceno’s latest, and then see what ESPN handed to Hiestand. Nothing against Mike Lopresti or Christine Brennan, but we’ve always kind of read his stuff first. Maybe it was the unruly hair, who knows.

Part of us wonders if he can get Isiah Thomas to respond to this, but that’s probably not the wisest way to enter a beat.