Stat Ball

There's a long but very interesting article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about Shane Battier and the application of advanced statistics in basketball.

First, here are Battier's career stats:

10.1 points | 4.8 rebounds | 1.8 assists | .447 FG%

These are very unremarkable numbers, yet this article argues that Battier is one of the most efficient players in the NBA today. Take a look at this:

The Grizzlies went from 23-59 in Battier’s rookie year to 50-32 in his third year, when they made the N.B.A. playoffs, as they did in each of his final three seasons with the team. Before the 2006-7 season, Battier was traded to the Houston Rockets, who had just finished 34-48. In his first season with the Rockets, they finished 52-30, and then, last year, went 55-27 — including one stretch of 22 wins in a row.

Obviously there are any number of other factors at work here, but it would appear, at least anecdotally, that Battier's presence significantly increases a team's winning percentage.

In the article, Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker) talks about how the Houston Rockets are successfully utilizing new statistical models that emphasize a player's unselfishness and overall efficiency. They argue that in basketball, the goals of the team and the individual players are not necessarily aligned. The key to the Rockets' personnel model is that "...there is no statistic that a basketball player accumulates that cannot be amassed selfishly." This means that the traditional stats, like the ones I've quoted above, are not the best way to gauge a player's overall effect on the winningness of a team.

I found this to be a pretty interesting, but not particularly revelatory; this is the era of sports stats after all, and we've heard about these types of things before. What really blew my mind was the more granular application of these statistics on Shane Battier's defensive gameplanning. Battier, who typically guards the opponent's most dangerous scorer, is given a dossier before each game that outlines that player's most efficient tendencies. For example, is he more effective off the dribble or pass, when he drives to his right or left, or when he shoots from the baseline or the elbow. When a supremely intelligent player like Battier assimilates this information, he is able to put together a gameplan that allows him to dramatically reduce the efficiency of a player like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James. If he's doing everything correctly, Battier is essentially playing the most statistically effective defense possible given the opponent and his own physical abilities.

As I said, it's a long article, but it's definitely worth a look. I'll leave you with one more interesting little tidbit that will slightly diminish the joy of watching a live basketball game:

One statistical rule of thumb in basketball is that a team leading by more points than there are minutes left near the end of the game has an 80 percent chance of winning.

Don't you wish you sort of wish you didn't know that?