Basketball Statistics Blog

Basketball Statistician's Digest:
The proper application of Basketball Statistical Analysis

From Pro Basketball News/ By David Friedman
Download source here: ' The proper application of Basketball Statistical Analysis '

"... Morey tells Lewis that in basketball there can be, as Lewis phrases it, "a tension ... between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual." This does not exist so much in baseball or football. "There is no way to selfishly get across home plate" is the analogy Morey uses; in contrast, Morey says that when he worked for the Celtics the team had a point guard who would not pass the ball to a particular player, something that would not necessarily negatively affect that point guard's statistics but definitely negatively affected the team. ..."

"... Morey uses an adjusted plus/minus system as one analytical tool to evaluate players. Plus/minus simply records the point differential when a player is on the court versus when he is off the court, so the number can be "noisy" due to the impact that the other nine players have on the game but Morey uses certain methods that he will not disclose in order to get rid of a lot of the "noise." ..."

"... It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that Morey is not merely looking at spreadsheets and randomly assigning arcane values to certain combinations of numbers; statistics give him an indication of what to look for when he watches game film but he still has to watch game film to determine why players are putting up the numbers they do and to figure out what exactly those numbers mean. ..."

"... In other words, Morey appears to understand the limits of a purely mathematical approach to the game and thus uses numbers to confirm what his eyes tell him -- and vice versa. This is a completely different approach from the one taken by far too many stat gurus who are so enamored with their formulas that they dismiss the importance of actually watching games -- perhaps because they are in fact not truly capable of watching basketball games with any real understanding of what is happening on the court. ..."

Read more in Pro Basketball News

To read Today's 'Press Clippings' in Spanish, click above on the 'Español' tab or click here: 'El Scouting ~ Cómo Conocer al Rival y a Nuestro Equipo' por Miquel Ballester Ferrer

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