[Mythbuster] The front office telling the coach how to coach

at the Sloane conference, Mark Cuban said analyzing coaching decisions was one of the best uses of analytics

 

This arrangement will work fine -- until they disagree on a player. Then...

DM: I really think you need to start playing [Octopus] more.

KM: Nah, [Octopus] needs to earn his minutes just like anyone else.

DM: Normally you'd be right, but I gave up a first-rounder for this kid and we need to see what he can do.

KM: Dude, I see him in practice every day, tweeting on his iPhone when he's supposed to be listening or doing drills.

DM: Still, I think you need to give him a few minutes and see what he can do.

KM: Tell you what -- I'll give him a few minutes washing my car. If he does a good job on that, he can move up to helping wash the towels. How's that for minutes, Einstein-Boy?

DM: Look, Frankenstein, I'm still in charge around here and that guy who sits next to you on the bench is itching for a chance at running the whole enchilada.

KM: Maybe you have a point. Let's do this: You give [Octopus] some time working as your assistant. If he's mature enough to handle that, I'll play him. Deal?

DM: Deal.


ONE WEEK LATER...


DM: Hey, Kevin? Um... regarding [Octopus]... you were right. He's a total waste of oxygen.

KM: I knew you'd see it my way.

DM: Yeah, so I traded him this morning. Got you a starting PF in return. This guy's a natural athlete -- he's got hops, he's got length, quickness, agility, etc.

KM: Fantastic. What's his name?

DM: Stromile Swift. Heard of him?

 

the issue was shotblocking, then somebody made an excuse for adelman by mentioning hayes. i said if shotblocking was the priority, he could have played patterson. i never said either one of them was a center. only raising the point that adelman could have made changes if he wanted. reading comprehension - try to use it.

and what's with this "moreyite" stuff. didn't one of the mods recently start a thread about how that kind of stuff is dumbing down this board? just because someone doesn't hate morey like you, doesn't make them a "moreyite".

i'm a "rocket-ite". i support the rockets. rick adelman is not a rocket. and i'm glad.

 

By defintion, you just explained why I consider McHale's so-called "qualifications" to be lacking. If you have to delegate the nuts and bolts of the offense and defense to specialists then exactly what does that make McHale? This is the grand vision of the organization? Pass over more qualified coaches who know these things to hire a less experienced figurehead and silently run things from behind the Oz curtain? Where has that model ever produced a championship in the NBA?

I would like to believe what you say here but the personnel moves by Morey and now this coaching change tell me otherwise. And you just said it yourself that they will be using analytics to optimize lineups for game situations. That tells me that they will be making decisions based not on talent and experience but whatever their analytics tell them to be so. So if the analytics tell them that ThaBeet or T Williams should be starting, McHale will start them despite the fact that they both suck a** on the court. Well good luck with all that because all the analytics in the world won't help you when you face teams that have more talent. But then, that's only true if winning matters and I'm am no longer sure that is the case anymore with the Rockets. Oh, they may talk a good game and they can spin BS with the best of them but until any of this results in tangible results (i.e WINS, playoffs, etc.) I will remain unconvinced as to their true motives and their competence.

 

Off the top of my head, Larry Bird standing there while Rick Carlisle was coaching the Pacers. And Phil isn't the guy out there actually running the triangle,that was designated to Rambis and Shaw. Phil's speciality was largely keeping his very talented players like Jordan or Kobe from running amok like Lebron did in Cleveland, which is why the complaint of Jackson not being able to do anything without those elite players is a load of crap. If it can work with Phil Jackson, or Bird, that means that it could work with McHale.

…..huh? Um, Hillboy, what do you think the purpose of those analytics are, exactly, if they are not a means to figuring out who are the most talented players? I mean, the analytics can be wrong ( and somehow I suspect it would be a more conventional style of thinking that would start 6’6’’ Chuck Hayes over 7’3’’ Thabeet as opposed to analytics, but that’s just me), but to act like you can’t use numbers to determine the best players is sort of ridiculous. You and I both do it, even if it’s nothing more than watching a boxscore.

 

edited

 

If analytics tell them that someone should be playing, it's probably because the team is better off with them on the court. Im not sure why you're saying that statistical analysis is going to produce these off the wall ideas that tell the coaching staff to play terrible players. The numbers that the front office collects doesn't just randomly decide who is a good player like you're making it out to be. If the data comes out and is enough for Morey to tell McHale that a certain player should play, it's more than likely because when he has played, the Rockets have been a statistically better team with him on the court. Meaning with that player out there we score more points, give up fewer points, rebound significantly better, force opponents to shoot more jump shots, or some other quantifiable way that would help the team.

If, using your example, Terrence Williams gets playing time and he's terrible as you said, it will be reflected in the analytics. It would be plainly obvious that the offense gets fewer quality shots when he is playing and if his effort on defense lacked, you would also see an indication of this in the statistical analysis. Conversely, if he plays and you think he sucks and it looks like that, but the analytics come back and say that despite what we thought we saw, the Rockets outscore opponents by 5 more points per game when Terrence plays as compared to with him off the court, would you disagree that it would be worth exploration into the causes of that?

Because that's what analytics is all about. Statistical analysis will pop out a couple of things that you didn't expect or notice when watching, and it will suggest to you to go back and further look into that. In the above example, did Terrence appear to largely do nothing but upon further inspection made a few subtle plays that would open up space for teammates? Did we never see him making plays on defense because he was successfully denying his man the ball? Or was he really just useless on the court and the beneficiary of playing while the Rokcets had a strong lineup on the court and the opponent had a weak one? This is where analytics and coaching meet. Analytics will show us some areas where statistically we may have an advantage or be at a disadvantage, then the coaching staff will take that data, determine if it's relevant data, then, if it was relevant data, they will try to incorporate it into the gameplanning. At no point will numbers blindly dictate strategy, that would be stupid. But it is definitely possibly for analytics to point out something useful that wasn't caught when going through film the first time, but can be clearly observed when taking a closer look.

 

Geaux did have a great post, and it's why I asked Hillboy to explain his understanding of analytics in my response. It seems like every third post in one of these threads is something like:

"Morey needs to pull his head out and realize that the game is played on the court and not in a spreadsheet. Stats are no substitute for heart and talent. If Morey would focus more on winning basketball games and less on statistics, the Rockets would be a contender. He needs to get us a star. Stars win championships, not formulas. We can't just look at numbers" and on and on it goes.

I read stuff like this and wonder what in the world they think the team is doing. I truly believe they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what analytics are and how the organization uses them. and that they think our front office just looks at box scores and TS% and maybe some +/- numbers and generate all decisions from that. It's the only explanation I can think of for why this nonsense persists.

 

Just quit while you're way behind, you've contributed nothing to this thread other than baseless generalizations. Btw, the reason you think McHale is a bad hire is because you have no analytics, Morey even explained how to properly analyze his Minnesota tenure. Citing his win loss record is not analytics, my 5 year old could do that.

 

excellent post, wish i could rep that

i'm not sure why some people are so afraid of analytics. it is an incredibly powerful tool. we don't need an MIT geek to read simple box scores - it goes much deeper than that. different types of stats give you different types of information, some stats are better than others, and every stat has another set of stats behind it.

here's an example - points per game. quite simply, it tells you how many points each team averages per game. it is interesting, depending on how you interpret it, but here's a better stat - points per possesion, aka "efficiency". if one coach is using ppg, and another coach is using efficiency, then the latter has the advantage because it is a better stat and gives him a deeper understanding of the game. same goes for field goal percentage vs "true shooting percentage", and so on.

more advanced stats gives your team an edge vs less advanced stats. every set of stats gives you a particular insight into the game, and every set of stats has another set of stats underneath that tells you how those stats came to be. and THOSE stats have more stats underneath, etc. the further you can dig and collect data, the more of an advantage you have.

i'm 99.99999% sure that morey's analysis sows that chuck hayes is better than thabeet. and there's no way that thabeet could look better than chuck unless it was true.

i think its hilarious how people dismiss analytics in favor of "eyeballs" or "experience" ... how can people possibly say those things with a straight face. how do people think that stats are collected ??? stats are collected FROM eyeballs. really well trained eyeballs. and what is experience but a collection of information ??

 

Analytics are for losers. We should all feel blessed that CD didn't buy into this garbage. If he had, then we never would have ended up with REAL BASKETBALL PLAYERS WITH TALENTS THAT NUMBERS CANT MEASURE like Stromile, Maurice, and Kelvin.

 

i don't think adelman was against morey's input. adelman came here with morey in place. he knew what gm he was working with. i don't even think the problems made out to be between the two over trades are legitimate.

i think the problem is direction of the team overall. morey puts players in place adelman gets to pick his rotation. that should be how it was handled.

 

that's how it works, yes. but here's also how it works - if those rotations are questionable and lead to losses, while other options are available and could have helped the team, then the coach has to be held accountable.

 

this is sooo funny. before shane battier was traded, you morey only fans swore up and down on his value. as soon as the offense functioned better with chase, you guys started saying adelman hung on to battier to long.

who wanted battier to play more, morey or adelman?

 

since you answered, you know

so this criticism works for brooks, whom was the mip the previous season, but not for battier who just got a year older.

LOL

 

because coaches don't dump players after one year after an injury. that's the other stupidity of this argument, morey can criticize adelman for not playing certain young players but criticize him for not playing his award winning young point guard?

and the offense didn't perform better with chase? come on man, lets remain serious