Basketball Statistics Blog

Basketball Statistician's Digest:
Geeks get in the game at Sports Analytics Conference

From Ars Technica By Brad Stenger
Download source here: ' Geeks get in the game at Sports Analytics Conference '

"... Without giving away the guts of the system, Cuban explained that it values a player's performance more during close games and also looks at overall consistency. 'Scoring when up by 30 is worth nothing,' Cuban wrote. 'The lower the variance, the more consistent the player on offense or defense.' ..."

"... "The trick of it is to make a case that's not 'I've got this magic black box over here. I can't explain it to you, but it's telling me that you're doing things wrong,'" said Mike Zarren, a Boston Celtics analyst, at the event. "Coaches are pretty competitive people and they want an edge. If you can give them an edge and convince them it really is an edge, they'll be pretty receptive. And the same thing goes for the players." ..."

"... Mark Cuban was the most direct. He described something that stands to become common practice as basketball analysis becomes universal. "We'll track [our players'] best shooting spot on the court and we'll tell them, 'You shoot that 3-pointer over there and you're an idiot because you're 1 for 99,'" he said. "'Move over ten feet and you're shooting 43 percent.' We want you to take that shot as often as possible." ..."

"... Despite the increased attention from pro basketball and from the media, sports analytics remains a discipline with big unsolved problems. ESPN's Hollinger brought up how poorly defense is accounted for in game result data. Steals, blocks, and sometimes deflections are counted, but they hardly give a comprehensive picture of defensive success or failure. Better ways of capturing and recording data may help, but there's still an art to the whole process unlikely to ever go away, so long as coaches attempt to capture something as complex as a game in numerical form. ..."

"... Stats geeks have always been attracted to sports, with its myriad statistics and box scores and hundred-year data sets, but there's generally been a sharp divide between the statheads and the players generating all those numbers. With the advent of sports analytics, though, players and coaches are willing like never before to take guidance from the number geeks. ..."

Read more in Ars Technica

You must be logged in to read or post a comment. Register

tags:  basketball  ~  statistician's digest   ~  basketball analysis  ~  statistics  ~  Michael Lewis
visit:  eBA Portal  ~  eBA Forums  ~  eBA Encyclopedia  ~  eBA Clinics