Basketball Stats: They all maximize what they think they’re being paid for

That article was really well-rounded.<p>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.

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.

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: <a href="http://dberri.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">http://dberri.wordpress.com/</a>.<p>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.

By Michael Lewis.

<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22teaching+to+the+test%22" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=%22teaching+to+the+test%22</a><p>By the way, some committee leaders think it's a great idea: <a href="http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/823" rel="nofollow">http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/823</a><p><i>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."</i>

I'm a hacker that used to play juco basketball - this article is extremely on target.<p>I'm surprised this article didn't mention Dean Oliver or this book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Basketball-Paper-Rules-Performance-Analysis/dp/1574886886/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books&#38;qid=1234664207&#38;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Basketball-Paper-Rules-Performance-Ana...</a>

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

It seems like you should be able to quantify defense by keeping track of the points scored by the guy you're covering...<p>Glad to see my hometown team developing new basketball statistics :-)

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.

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..

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

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