Well far be it from me to be on Barkley's side on anything, but I only partially agree with him. 1st of all I can't stand Barkley. I think he's a JERK and he's a fool that embarrasses himself WAY too often. With regard to Analytics, the practice has it's place as I argued earlier in other threads. It's not everything a GM should use in order to build a team but it can be very useful in making better player decisions.
With regard to the Knicks they have a very good set of front office people who are well versed in using Analytics. Mark Warkentien of the Knicks has his philosophy on it:
Warkentien said. "You've got 13 guys on a team; every time you do make a move, you're investing 7-8 percent of your portfolio. The more information gives you more knowledge, which gives you more power."For years, Warkentien has evaluated players with an approach he calls "eyes-ears-numbers." Heading into the 2009 NBA draft, scouts suggested to Warkentien that North Carolina's Ty Lawson was a point guard's point guard. Fast. Heady. A winner. But the kid wasn't a great shooter and wasn't even 6-feet tall. So Denver went to the numbers.
The case for Ty Lawson
At a recent breakfast, Oliver opened his Dell, and on the screen were statistics as scrambled as his eggs.
"This ain't points and rebounds, huh?" an onlooker asked.
"Nooooooo," Oliver said with emphasis.
It was his personal breakdown of North Carolina's team last season, first ranking individual offensive efficiency. What's that?
"It's how many points per 100 possessions did the player use, in order to create points," he said. Field goals count, as do turnovers and free throws.
"So, you have to count the opportunities that it takes to create those," he explained. "This is their efficiency in doing that, in creating points. Ty created 139 points per 100 possessions that he used — any factor of creating points. That is a huge number."
Next was "individual defensive efficiency per 100 possessions," in which "we estimate how often he forced his guy into a bad shot, or how many turnovers he created," Oliver said. He also liked Lawson's numbers there.
After that, there were columns dissecting a player's scoring possessions, total possessions, points produced, percentage of the team offense a player is responsible for and, finally, defensive stops (how many times he was part of stopping the opponent). As Oliver often says, the stats see every game, and the Nuggets were pleased with what the stats saw when they looked at Lawson.
Oliver, who will do some college scouting for the Nuggets this season, also used "pure point rating" — which Warkentien believes is a stronger gauge of a point guard than assist-to-turnover ratio, if only because a turnover is arguably more harmful than an assist is helpful, so why should they be equal?
"It's how much are you creating for your teammates, versus screwing up," Oliver said of pure point rating, and sure enough, Lawson's pure point rating ranked historically among the best in NCAA history.
"The numbers on Lawson absolutely reinforced our eyes and ears," Warkentien said.
Asked if Lawson, the 18th overall pick, should have gone higher in the draft, Oliver could only smile and say, "I don't care — we got him."
Weights and measures
Dean Oliver, the Nuggets' director of quantitative analysis, turns basketball into numbers. Here's a close look at what he finds and feeds to the Nuggets' executives and coaches:
Tendencies: "Stats see every game," Oliver said, and he uses data to try to dissect and expose tendencies of opponents. This is especially helpful in the playoffs, when a team plays the same opponent up to seven times.
Overrated: As much as Oliver helps executives decide whom they should try to acquire, he helps even more pointing out which players the Nuggets should avoid. "There is not a huge predictive value," Nuggets executive Mark Warkentien said. "There is a huge — bigger than downtown Denver — eliminating value."
Self-evaluation: Oliver points out information for the Nuggets' coaches on what they can learn from past performances about their current players, using his "Historical and Statistical" numbers crunching. This information can also help in determining whom to add to a roster.
Efficiency: Oliver believes teams should focus on the optimum way to maximize possessions. "He's helped upgrade the upper echelon of decision-making," coach George Karl said, "and I think in the world of business today, those guys are becoming more and more important. The computerized formulas are sometimes the reason why you do something, or the reason why you don't do something."
2/11/2015 11:11 AM