Thought this was funny, didn't see it here, please lock it up if it has already been posted. Nice article. ESPN MAG - Stats Geeks (just an excerpt) "A few weeks ago, I spent a Saturday at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, or as I dubbed it, Dorkapalooza 2009! A slew of statistical rock stars showed up: Dean Oliver, Aaron Schatz, John Hollinger. Panels argued topics like "Where are basketball analytics headed?" and "What's more important, coming up with a cool formula or kissing a girl?" The hottest celeb? My friend Daryl Morey, the Rockets GM, who was hounded by MIT students as if he were Britney among the paparazzi. I dubbed him Dork Elvis. Even he admitted that was funny. Begrudgingly."
At least give kudos to bigred77 for posting it in the defensive thread like 15 minutes ago I tease. It's a fun little article by Simmons about stats. Here's the original post , but I think it probably deserved it's own thread.
dork elvis? wanna know why be begrudgingly admitted it was funny? because the wizard doesn't do funny!
Great article. D. Howard really is an idiot for swatting every ball out of bounds. If he would control himself and just tip it to himself, wouldn't that be better? Guess its not about winning, its about showtime.
I do wonder, though, if there is a positive psychological effect in swatting balls out of bounds like that. Could it perhaps increase the intimidation factor?
nice read, and it is almost exactly how i feel on the topic. I make similar points regularly and the response is generally "shut up man, you just too stupid to understand this." Really? This is like elementary school level math, not complex at all. The complex part is already done for use by guys like Hollinger and Morey's team, compiling all this information and making it fit into something useful. The problem is that fans take this as gospel, the be all, end all of how players perform. The funny thing is the "Dork Elvis" doesn't, he knows there are variables that affect these stats and skew them. These guys try their best to track them and implement that in their own statistics, which we do not have access to. Sometimes the best we can do is explain these variables (late shot clock shots, stops, etc.) until we have more information to account for them.
i agree. its not the stats they calculate that are complicated. its having the data to make simple stats say what they are supposed to say. people in Morey's position track every detail of what happens. having the details of the game is what builds the much more complete statistical picture of basketball. having that picture enables them to ask better questions and get better answers. it's a huge undertaking, and requires a ton of effort from a ton of people. I give him a lot of credit for assembling all the people necessary to make it happen.
Clutchfans has the largest fan community of any basketball team on the planet. Might it be possible for us to take advantage of that and start tracking these things in a more organized fashion? I think that would be pretty cool, but it would have to be a lot of people pitching in.
Dude Morey is getting fat as hell. He needs to take some time to exercise a bit. Let's collect a fun to get a stationary bike in his office or something.
it would be awesome. we'd need a set of people with a good eye for detail, and each person would have to have a staggered set of responsibilities for each play. like: person 1 would be tracking the timing of the shots vs. the shot clock. person 2 would be tracking the timing of the shots vs. the game clock. person 3 would be tracking the location on the floor the shot was taken. person 4 would be tracking the defender on the shot and how contested it was. person 5 would be tracking the play that was used to get that shot (iso/pnr/pnp/back cut/post up) etc. i think thats how you'd have to do it, so that we could get all the details we would need. because we'd need people to track fouls, rebounds, true assists, hockey assists, and pretty much anything else we could think of. i'd say we would prolly need about 20 dedicated folks to build a really good database. your thoughts?
I can help. I'll track LeBron. According to ESPN he shoots 100% from three. So apparenlty he's the best 3pt shooter ever. Stats r fuun. Seriously though that's a great idea. Also, clutchfans is awesome.
Some stuff, like timing on shots, can be determined through parsing the play by play in an automated fashion. The other things you mention would be great. If each person has something very specific to track, it may not be that much work actually. Ideally, you'd want at least two tracking the same thing, in case there are some mistakes.
Why is this reminding me of that old Far Side cartoon where there are some cows in a pasture building a rocket ship, and the farmer is saying 'Stupid cows. They'll never get that thing off the ground.'