http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/201206/muthuball-mit-sloan-sports-analytics-conference

The caterer?

The NBA ballers who dress up like geeks for the post-game interviews.

I just hope the Pistons have finally embraced the sabermetrics stuff.

I don't expect us to live and die by it or spend millions and millions of dollars on it... but there are teams who are right into this shit and if we just blow it off it's foolish

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/06/23/3337874/bobcats-hope-massive-revamp-of.html

There's limits to numerical analysis of hoops. The evolution has been mostly along the lines of "what works", not why it works. For example, it's obvious that home court is associated with wins and mostly obvious to what extent the bias exists. But WHY? There could be lots of reasons, but I just haven't seen much that really digs into that. I'll believe that they have the data gathering and algorithms right when:

1) Currently-existing simulators predict what happens when new rule changes are introduced. Yes, this means tracking the refs.
2) We start getting injury predictions that correspond to what happens. Yes, this means tracking athletic health history at all stages of their life, including genetic testing.
3) They account for making money -- why have gimpy Lin or AI in a rotation, more back-to-backs due to reduced games on Thursday due to TNT, etc.

Yeh, most sabermetric models point to the success of baseball predictions and try to extrapolate that to other sports. Unfortunately it's not a straihtline comparison. Baseball models work so well because it's a serious of identifiable and definable situations. Batter versus pitcher, counts, ballparks etc. 'How does Albert Pujols do against Justin Verlander in Comerica park with the wind blowing out, two runs on and a 2-2 count?' or 'How does Pujols do against a lefty who throws 60% fastballs in a 3-2 count and the shift on?' You don't have those same definable situations in other sports. Was there a double team going on? Was Ben Wallace coming over with help defense? Etc etc.

I think what some teams are doing is heading in that direction though

Working out how effective a single player (Kobe) is on the left side of the floor, 18 feet from the hoop... the Battier article pointed to that

Right now "we" don't know much of what teams like Houston and Dallas do or don't do with this kind of stuff. Same for the Spurs, or Thunder or Charlotte. No team is going to end up in the press because whatever they're doing works... if it works they'll keep it in house

How do "we" determine if it works? We have no idea what they're doing in the first place!

But as a massive NRL fan (rugby league) and as someone who is all over fantasy NRL it came as a bit of a surprise when the media "announced" to the masses that Manly coach Des Hasler used what they call a CVR with his Manly squad... CVR looks at 50 different areas of an NRL game! FIFTY!

http://www.championpicks.com.au/blog/horse-racing/the-nrl-cvr-top-15-players/

That article lists the CVR top 11... then the reporter names his 11 under the criteria of "influences a game the most". Obviously the 2 lists are different

http://www.theroar.com.au/2012/05/21/stats-dont-lie-but-do-they-paint-the-whole-picture/

That article mentions some stuff that as Piston fans we are well aware of: no one has been able to quantify team chemistry or intangibles and those make all the difference

Again, I'm not saying the Pistons need to live and die by this stuff... but if memory serves the franchise had not embraced this thinking in any way a few years ago. I believe that's foolish

As an organisation we need to be looking at any and all ways to get an upper hand over our opposition. Stats is one thing a lot of teams are using...

if we don't embrace it to some extent then we're behind from the get go

http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/catanella_release_111205.html

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/5007/an-nba-stat-geek-prepares-for-the-draft

that 2nd link has a pretty good interview with our boy Kenny

Good to read the guy actually played the game as a pro, even if it was in Germany. He's not just a number cruncher :)