So: Does Morey play this game? If so, did he factor in the probability of McGrady and/or Yao going down with serious injuries, or not? Did he plan accordingly, or not? If he doesn't play this game: Why not? Isn't it at least as important as on-court Moneyball?
Doesn't Morey often talk about bringing in versatile players that can play multiple positions? Wasn't his consideration of injury-risk one of the reasons he brought Artest in last season? Interesting read, btw. Thanks for posting.
Considering both T-Mac and Yao were already under contract when Morey came, it's not like he could use this metric in any way. But every player Morey's brought in were pretty healthy with us.
Pretty sure he does... I actually remember Les Alexander saying a few years ago (right when Morey came in) that he was kind of tired of injuries. Not sure if there was much to be done with Yao or McGrady, who were already signed to long-term deals. They probably did consider injuries when they brought in subsequent players. Scola has been very durable. Battier, aside from early part of the season, has been pretty good. Artest had his issues and a history of injury, but he was brought in for the right price. I am guessing Ariza is the same way. It's most likely part of the calculation, but not something you avoid altogether (everyone has a risk of injury, more or less), just something you consider when making a move.
Morey did bring in Landry who had considerable injury risk. It was low risk though given what he was going to make as a 2nd rd pick. If I had to take a guess, it would be that Morey is already well aware of this "injuryball" concept and is keeping tabs on it.
Conte has 15 years of data for every type of injury and treatment. Morey has only been with the Rockets since 2006. He didn't have nearly enough data after the 1st season. Even today, he has only 3 years of injury data and only for a roster of 14-15 players not thousands like Conte. Les Alexander will have fork over the big bucks and buy the data from Conte.
You're also assuming that Morey doesn't have access to the same sort of tech and source that Conte does.
"Holy grail" is an apt word for this fraud. I don't see how statistical analysis could possibly be of any help in determining injury prone players. Even if it were possible, the degrees of freedom involved make it impractical.
When Morey started in 06, Yao had 3 straight 80+ seasons and 1 season where he got injured. T-Mac was pretty healthy also. He played several 70+ seasons until the Rockets.
Les will just have to spit up the cash for Conte's data. Morey just doesn't have 15 years of records as a professional trainer and the different injuries.
Yup exactly. While we're at it, we might as well try to acquire Andre Miller too. Miller has played 80+ games and been an ironman his entire career. I'm curious how Grant Hill (as injury prone as they come) and Miller (ironman) would fare on this team. If, for nothing else, experimental purposes.
It makes a lot of sense to consider injuries in building a roster, especially with the stars. But, I don't see that Morey would do anything but choose to keep McGrady and Yao, despite injuries. It'd be nice if they were ironmen, but getting players of their caliber is very hard to do as it is, so you accept the injury risk that goes with the talent.
I can think of at least three aspects: 1. body type 2. playing style 3. personal history Like Conte said, if insurance companies could analyze the probabilities of death, we could definitely analyze the probabilities of injury. Morey is the kind of guy that would definitely dip into this kind of statistical analysis. That said, I think there is a big difference between the insurance industry and an NBA team. Insurance has thousands of clients. The "irregular" cases average out in a large sample size. An NBA team's roster is only 15 people. With such a small sample size, it is very easy for a team to get "lucky" or "unlucky" and a single unlucky case can cripple a team by a large magnitude.
