[Daryl Morey Post-Mortem]WSJ: Geek-Infested Teams win 60% of Games, Geek-less 40%

The article asks: "But here's a question: Does it actually make a difference in how teams play?"

It gives the breakdown in winning% amongst teams that have stat people and teams that don't. This doesn't necessarily mean stat people make their teams better. And the article never draws that conclusion either. But it does suggest that good teams tend to value stat people, and bad teams tend not to value them so much. I think that's relevant.

Note that the article gives the other perspective as well:
[rquoter]Of course, there are plenty of veteran basketball decision-makers who don't believe that stats are the only key to success. They'll tell you the difference in winning percentages has less to do with statistical analysis than with statistical freaks.[/rquoter]

I'm sure we all have our own opinions, but it is still an open debate.

 

:grin:

Nice job, Carl Herrera. I think this joke has some staying power.

And Lol at David Kahn. He needs to STFU till he has done at least something worth noting in this league. Sure he is bitter that he has to be in Minnesota and doesn't have Lebron, and most of their troubles are not his fault, but still... When the only thing anybody remembers about him is the last summer's pr fiasco with Rubio, he maybe should abstain from giving "smart" comments like this.

 

What is your basis for saying Morey's statistical methods are MORE likely to find clutch players???

What's he looking at then?

 

IIRC, in that famous Battier non-stat allstar article a while ago, Morey said that they divided the court in to areas and observed how Battier defended and what were the shooting percentages of the offensive player in each area and so forth...

I am not sure if it's that article or if I read it somewhere else. Anyways, the fact that Morey could talk about that kind of things means that they are tracking a lot of things the average Joe never would think of, definitely including defense and clutchness.

I always ask the people who doubt analytics for basketball: How can you assume that your eyeballs (or anyone's) can see more than a whole trained staff of professionals watching every play of every player, and armed with expensive computation tools to analyze all that information?

 

What "expensive computation tools" do they use, anyway?

 

Well do it with more detail next time. Clutchfans is only interested in detailed statistical analysis.