Found this link on Truehoop at ESPN. http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/18678/the-googlization-of-basketball-information I thought it was interesting since it describes the way our GM seems to operate. Morey says he highly values Battier/Hayes in our team and even though this article doesn't specifically mention them I still think it applies. Perhaps this is the reason why some people don't value Battier/Hayes at all whereas others find them to be great assets to have in your team.
Back when Tom Landry was the first to use the computer for football, many purists thought that was just some useless gimmick. Now, NFL coaches and scouts can't imagine how they could work without the computer. I'ts amazing how some people in this day and age still think their own eyeball observation on a basketball court is more reliable than advanced stats.
For example, every person who continues to claim that Kobe Bryant is the best player in the NBA today.
What's going on with moneyball in the NBA could have happened in the 60s if management was savvy enough and motivated enough. The statistics already existed.
I wonder how much that stems from the fact that so many NBA executives are (or at least were) former players, guys who for the most part haven't taken a math class past high school-level algebra. Though I do think it's funny that there are still so many people in the sports media (Bill Plashke, for example) who reject moneyball theories in baseball. Maybe it's a similar dynamic at work, given that many of these guys probably chose writing at a career because they sucked at math in school. Or maybe it's because, the more people become stat-savvy, the less important sports writers become, at least in baseball. It's kinda weird though.
