Basketball Statistics Blog

Basketball Statistics Analysis Referred Concepts:
The Scouters & Statisticians Communities

"For the past recent years, the scouting and statistics communities have feuded like members of rival families. Basketball scouters who evaluate players with their eyes are treated with contempt and the numbers-oriented people are cast as cold, computer-wielding propellerheads with no appreciation for scouting intangibles. Not surprisingly, the camps have grown so polarized that they have retreated to their respective bunkers rather than engage in open and intelligent debate. Instead of gathering longtime scouts and statistics experts to discuss all the great issues in this arena."

"It is correct that we have coaches that "are not stat guys", that only trust what they see, and they think they don't need a bunch of numbers to get in the way. Others, use stats in various ways and are many which can speak about a tendex type formula.
Most of us, being in the basketball statistics analysis theme, and specially the analysis area, begin to understand that basketball is a difficult game to quantify, in some degree because of the way the game changes through time, and partially because of the powerful impact of teamwork, with the constant moving interaction of 12 players and the ball.

We are the same people which understand that at some level, we use the available information to better understand the game: no one stat can explain everything, so the combination of the numbers and the plays appreciation, eBA statistics analysis basis, is by this time the correct way."

"Basketball rates player's defense very badly meanwhile baseball, relatively, has multiple manners in this area. A basketball player may get a lot of blocks and simultaneously be a bad defender. On the other hand, another player may be an excellent man-to-man defender and at the same time don't get a lot of steals. A broad set of statistical methods can say us that the player A is better than the player B on offense, but they can't give us definitive elements about those players defensively. Only a good game analyst scouting professional can perform it.

Now, we know that basketball has a lot of difficult areas of quantitative information when we translate a game into statistics. For example, categories as "allowed points - from 2, 3 and PF bonus"; "offensive rebounds allowed"; "turnovers - that aren't steals" and "good and bad personal fouls" - see our complete list of statistical analysis categories here, which are included in the eBA Basketball Statistics Analysis System, are not accounted in the traditional statistical methods, specially those made at live game time.

Gathering and analyzing those categories of data will give us a sort of information, for example, about how many unguarded shots - no fastbreaks plays - were taken by the opponents, and how many were allowed to us. This kind of info is the correct way in evaluating defense."

"Don't you think that basketball players have been dehumanized too much by this stats tend ? Ignoring the human side is an adjustment for breakage. Statisticians and scouter must work together: to evaluate a player for purposes of building a team implies a lot more than whether that player can play. Numbers can help with analyzing what a player does on the court, but to build a team not only means numbers...."

Read More at eBA CLINICS ONLINE, search "basketball statistics" in this blog and consult the eBA Basketball Statistics Analysis System.

This topic is resumed in the eBA Basketball Statistics Analysis System
at the eBA Encyclopedia > eBA System.

NL0609

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