

Basketball Stats: They all maximize what they think they’re being paid for - divia
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

======
maxniederhofer
That article was really well-rounded.

I think over the next decade we're in for a huge shortage of analysts and
statisticians in almost all fields of life. Availability of data is ever
increasing. The benefits from using it more effectively than competitors are
immense. In almost all of the startup businesses in our portfolio (venture
capital firm), we've now hired number-crunching guys who do nothing but
metrics and we're seeing the results.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
shortage? nah. now those finance majors who were making millions on juggling
mutual funds can get a real job and contribute to society rather than living
off unearned commissions. (if your mutual fund does worse than the economy as
a whole you don't deserve reward, you are worse than random input)

~~~
ericwan
Well if they can't even do better than the S&P 500. Let's not hope that they'd
do much to society analyzing other data. ;)

------
jwesley
Great article. As a basketball player in my youth, I always struggled with the
dynamic of selfishness and selflessness inherent in the game and this was best
attempt I've seen at explaining it. There really are so many way a player can
help his team that do not improve, and even decrease, his stats. The use of
statistical methods to identify this, like Moneyball did for baseball, is
fascinating.

------
pwk
Fun article. I loved Moneyball, and enjoyed other stuff Michael Lewis has
written. I'm glad he's looking at basketball, since that's really the only
sport I actually follow a bit, mostly through a blog dedicated to sports stats
that happens to focus mostly on basketball: <http://dberri.wordpress.com/>.

The author (Dave Berri) is an economist who's done some work on connecting
team success to the actions of individual players through stats. A major theme
is that many players try to maximize their paydays by over-emphasizing
scoring, and that this is actually reasonably sensible on their part because
decision makers in basketball currently overvalue scoring, and pay
accordingly. It does look like that's slowly changing, at least according to
this article.

------
ecuzzillo
By Michael Lewis.

~~~
jessewmc
What does this post mean?

~~~
patio11
Michael Lewis is a non-fiction author. Most relevant to this thread, his name
is instantly recognizable among people who are interested in the intersection
of baseball and statistics, because he wrote Moneyball. The basic idea is that
historically the market for talent in baseball has severely mispriced talent
because it overpays for attributes that do not win ballgames. Thus, if one
knew what actually won ballgames, one could thwomp the competition while
spending much less money. And, sure enough, someone did just that.

For the rest of the story, I recommend the book. I have no interest in sports
whatsoever but one of my stats geek friends does, and he accords it a place of
honor in his bookshelf.

~~~
ssharp
"thwomp"? The Rockets are a good team but haven't won a championship and
haven't been that competitive in the playoffs.

The "moneyball" idea doesn't translate quite as well in basketball. One, it's
a significantly less statistical game than baseball. Athleticism doesn't
translate perfectly to numbers and individual stats can be largely effected by
teammates.

~~~
latortuga
To answer your first point, though I haven't read the book, I suspect it's
about a baseball team and GP didn't want to reveal the ending.

------
gravitycop
<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22teaching+to+the+test%22>

By the way, some committee leaders think it's a great idea:
<http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/823>

_says Nancy Grasmick, Maryland's state superintendent of schools, in a recent
article in the American School Boards Journal. "If you're teaching to the test
[...] then we don't see anything wrong with that."_

------
dburger
I'm a hacker that used to play juco basketball - this article is extremely on
target.

I'm surprised this article didn't mention Dean Oliver or this book:
[http://www.amazon.com/Basketball-Paper-Rules-Performance-
Ana...](http://www.amazon.com/Basketball-Paper-Rules-Performance-
Analysis/dp/1574886886/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234664207&sr=8-1)

------
gregstoll
It seems like you should be able to quantify defense by keeping track of the
points scored by the guy you're covering...

Glad to see my hometown team developing new basketball statistics :-)

~~~
xenophanes
> It seems like you should be able to quantify defense by keeping track of the
> points scored by the guy you're covering...

You'd need to watch deviations from the average points the guy scores.
Otherwise whoever is guarding the enemy star player looks bad.

~~~
albertni
This sounds good in theory but there are a TON of variables that would be
really hard to encapsulate. I'm not saying it can't be done, but (good)
defense in basketball is extremely team-oriented. Positioning, rotations,
double teams (and the rotations that accompany them), etc., not to mention
zone defense.

To give a more concrete example, a team with a great defensive center gives
the guards flexibility to play tighter man to man, because they can more
readily afford to let the guy they're guarding get by them (thanks to their
"backup", the center). This has the additional consequence of implying that
they give up less room on jump shots.

Another thing to consider is steals. A steal is really big because it
obviously prevents the opponent from scoring, and frequently leads to fast
break opportunities. However, it's misleading to simply look at the number of
steals a player gets. Some players get steals within the "flow of the game",
whereas others get them through gambling (I don't have a quantitative source
for this, but anyone who's watched Larry Hughes play knows what I'm talking
about) for steals, meaning that whenever they fail to get the steal, they also
end up way out of position, often leading to an easy score for the opponent.

The list of variables goes on and on....

------
tjstankus
My favorite Cameron Crazies chant ever: "Whose your Daddy? Battier."

~~~
unexpected
dude, nothing topped speedo guy!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpHB6W_r9ag>

~~~
maximilian
The oddest thing about that video is that his wife was dating speedo guy's
brother, and then dumped his brother for him.

------
blackthought286
the player that is not a star but helps his team wins championships is James
Posey. Every team needs a guy that does the dirt work and nobody is more
effective at doing that right now than Posey. Coming off of the bench he
played a huge part in both Miami Heat and Celtics championships. He plays
great defense and is also an offensive threat from the outside.

~~~
josefresco
By that logic, every team that wins championships also needs at least two
superstars. The Heat had two, the Celtics had 3.

While I love Posey (Celtics fan here), it takes a foundation of superstar
talent first to even have a chance.

Many people take for granted the 20-30 points, that the team scoring leader
puts up every night, and start to look elsewhere for that magic winning
element. Without the consistent play of the scorer (and the attention that
draws from defense) guys like Posey would be exploited by a good team.

------
omnivore
Read it a few hours ago and really enjoyed it. The recognition of all of these
teams that there are ways to build a team beyond the conventional is smart
thinking, even if doesn't always result in titles out of the box..

------
ojbyrne
Interesting article. I think that hockey is going to be the next fertile field
for this kind of analysis.

------
prakash
I wish they had based this article on Shawn Marion...

