A better take on the ongoing stat nerd war
Yet another blog to read
By Alan Paul
My friend Jon Weiler has an interesting, cerebral blog called Sports Media Review, in which he tackles a wide range of sports and sports coverage issues. He often writes about hoops and has an interesting, deep take on things. Most welcome to me, he is not snarky, a style of writing that’s getting a little old and overused in my book.
Here he wades into the stats geek fight between Hollinger and Malcom Gladwell’s boyfriend. Although I personally don’t have a lot of patience for all of this stuff which I think turns the game we love into boring, tedious math class, I like Jon’s take.
It bugged me enough when the stats geeks took over baseball, but in some ways they were a relief after years of bad poetry spilled over the game. But basketball just seems to me inherently ill suited to this sort of numbers crunching.
And we’ve had so much brain power spilled over this argument, which is patently absurd. How can you ultimately defend a system that crunches numbers then declares Junkyard dog Williams to be more valuable than Allen Iverson? It’s absurd for so many reasons but most importantly because it doesn’t take into account the makeup of the team. Someone like JYD is extremely useful as a teammate to someone like AI. Basketball is a team game and a players’ worth is virtually impossible to measure in a vacuum. You have to, you know, watch the games.
13 Responses to “A better take on the ongoing stat nerd war”
Dec.7 at 1:46 pm
TheHype says:
“Bold” statement. hehe, nahnah, I totally feel you guys. Hoops is poetry in motion, you can define it in a lab.
Dec.7 at 1:47 pm
TheHype says:
*can’t define… oops!
Dec.7 at 3:43 pm
Tom says:
the number crunching thing worked in baseball because baseball is such an individual game. success in hoops has so much to do with team chemistry and other stuff that you can’t measure with numbers, so as far as stats and hoops go……….as long as it doesn’t go past fantasy leagues, it’s cool.
Dec.7 at 6:27 pm
Sam Rubenstein says:
My bad on the boldness. Fixed it. I hope.
Dec.7 at 7:27 pm
albie1kenobi says:
remember there once was a list of 50 most valuable players on a site called slamonline and everyone’s trying to kill each other over the rankings? same problem.
statistics can help make cases for ranking basketball players, but it can’t be a tell-all measure stick. to quote mr weiler, it’s an interdepdent game. one action by one player on the floor affects everyone on the court. as sam (i believe) pointed out some time earlier, in an 8-catagories ranking, yahoo fantasy basketball has ray allen and rashard lewis as 2 of their 4 top players. well, i don’t think the sonics are doing that well.
analyzing basketball player with numbers is basically just all in-theory. chemistry, make up of team, coaching all play into how valuable a player is. hence the MVP talk is always fun (or aggravating depends on your point of view).
Dec.7 at 7:29 pm
albie1kenobi says:
oh hey forgot to ask. how’s the far east side treating you, AP? any new things happening? (you are still there right?)
Dec.7 at 11:15 pm
G-Rock says:
JYD IS DOPE !!!!!!!!
Dec.8 at 12:26 am
Justin Adler says:
Wait Sam, I am confused are you trying to say it takes five?
Dec.8 at 12:32 am
Justin Adler says:
Apparently I’m more confused that I thought I was that should have said “Wait Alan.”
Dec.8 at 12:58 am
PJ says:
Another product of lab work and numbers-crunching: the new NBA ball.
Dec.8 at 1:06 am
nham says:
JYD better than A.I.? Man that is an absolute joke.
Dec.8 at 5:57 am
apaul says:
albie, I am still in Beijing. All is good. I am saying it takes five and more… It’s just a crazy thing.. I am too tired to go into it more right now.. I promise I will. check out Jon’s blog.
Dec.8 at 6:00 am
apaul says:
Just one example.. it’s easy to crunch numbers and say you can’t win with AI.. but i say you have to look at him and his unusual , confounding but quite amazing talent and figure out how.. that’s your job if you are the GM.. they did it for one year, with a bunch of garbage ball players like Lynch and T Hill who could snag and put back missed shots and a steady tough pg like Snow to balance him… complementary players are essnetial but they need stars to complement.