Any of y'all feel like advanced stats are ruining sports now?

[HHR]

If advanced stats ruin sports for you then you're probably an idiot.

More information isn't a bad thing.

 

[HHR]

The one thing advanced stats will never tell us is who is going to be great under intense pressure. People like to say that playing in a big market is no issue or that the playoffs are the same thing as the regular season but I disagree. I truly believe that certain players will step up in pressure situations and others will melt. To me there's a big difference between how you are hitting in May compared to how you are going to hit in a big spot in October.

The biggest problem with this is that once players get a "clutch" or "choker" reputation, it's nearly impossible to shed. People will place more weight on the plays/results that back-up their preconceptions while dismissing those that refute it.

See: Derek Jeter, 2001 World Series.

 

[Saysumthinfunnymike]

Superstars are usually always going to perform up to what you would expect though. There are some rare cases of guys melting down but I'm more talking about a guy like Weaver who could not fukking pitch in New York at all and there's been a lot of cases like him.

 

[KritNC]

I really was expecting this thread to be abuot this article. Very long read but very informed and pretty much sums up what is trying to be debated in here

http://www.sbnation.com/longform/20..._medium=nextclicks&utm_campaign=articlebottom

PARALYSIS BY ANALYSIS
A WEEKEND AT SLOAN, AND THE PLUSES AND MINUSES OF ADVANCED ANALYTICS

It is 8:15 on Friday morning, and the PA system in the 3rd floor ballroom at the Boston Convention Center is stuck in 1982. A room full of 2,700 people is rocking out to Rod Stewart, The Beatles, Bob Seger, and Paul Simon. I don't know it at this point, but "Late in the Evening" and "Hollywood Nights" will be stuck in my head for the next 48 hours.


I look around a ballroom full of white males and write in my notes: "If this conference were a human, it would be wearing a blazer and button down with jeans and loafers (with no socks)." Formal enough to be taken seriously, but still loose enough to have a little fun.

You've probably already heard the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference discussed in one place or another, and read about it, too. You probably already know that it began in 2007 with Rockets GM Daryl Morey and a handful of like-minded peers gathering together at MIT's Sloan Business School to put together a series of panels for a few hundred students. You've probably also heard the conference has grown every single year since 2007.

"It seems like it doubles in size every year," a friend tells me before we get started Friday.

Outside the ballroom I'm getting coffee, and behind me I hear a college student say, "This trip was my birthday present to myself."

Somehow a conference about advanced metrics and sports business became a place everyone wants to be. It's not a cheap birthday present. According to the website, a ticket to this event costs $132.00 for MIT students, $205.50 for students anywhere else, $494.50 for MIT faculty, and $591.90 for general admission. (I paid $132.00 to attend as media, but ESPN sponsors this event, so a majority of the media here arrived on free pass from the Worldwide Leader.)

Inside the ballroom a few minutes later, it's time for the opening remarks, and Morey tells a crowd of 2,700, "This started as 100 people seven years ago, it's become mainstream because it works."

There are one-liners about the sequester, Wang Zhi-Zhi and Chinese hackers, the Oscars, and we see pie charts with actual pies. It's the best, dorkiest cocktail party ever.

"Recently, we were named the Super Bowl of analytics by Forbes," co-chair Jessica Gelman tells the crowd.

It's hard to imagine what this conference looked like in 2007, but today this self-congratulating sentiment percolates through every panel, every presentation, and really, a whole bunch of the attendees. Which makes sense. Sloan is a victory lap for guys like Daryl Morey and even all the young people who dream of one day being the next Daryl Morey. This conference started as a blip on the periphery, and this weekend it feels something like the epicenter of the sports industry, full of outsiders who now have the inside track to running sports. Even the college kids who showed up here desperate for jobs can say they went to Sloan and it'll impress all their friends who didn't.

Anyway, I'm here as a skeptic, and I'll leave as a skeptic, but in the meantime my only goal is to figure out why exactly I'm skeptical.

So, what does it look like when 2,700 smart people talk sports? At any given time the conference features hour-long panels in three separate rooms, and four presentations each hour, two on academic research papers, and two on the "evolution of sport." In between, there are 20-minute breaks to race between rooms. All of which is to say, the conference is outrageous and overwhelming. Let's take a handful of snapshots and try to make sense of it.

● ● ●
“People who make decisions or own things want to hire experts. They want to hire experts who are sure about their answers. Whereas what we're saying is, 'Boy all we can do is shift the odds.' It's sort of like conservative talk radio vs. liberal talk radio. The conservatives are very sure about [things], it makes for great radio and people argue. Whereas on the left people are like, 'Well it's sorta this, it's sorta that.' It just doesn't sell as well.”~ DARYL MOREY, ROCKETS GENERAL MANAGER, SSAC CO-FOUNDER


Samantha Yanofsky, SLY Photography

Nobody dismisses critics quite like an analytical genius. That talk radio analogy takes three sentences and makes the analytics movement irresistible. Because if there's tension between analytical minds like Morey and some other faction of the basketball community, nobody wants to be on the side that reminds people of Rush Limbaugh.

For another example: There's one section in Moneyball where Michael Lewis spends a few pages on a scene from an Oakland front office meeting where they're arguing over a prospect named Jeremy Brown, a catcher from the University of Alabama. He's overweight and the scouts don't like him, but he scores high in a lot of the categories that Billy Beane and his assistant Paul DePodesta use to predict success. An argument ensues and lasts several pages, and it ends like so:

The fat scout looks up from his giant chocolate chip cookie and seeks to find a way to get across how unimpressed he is. "Well," he says, exaggerating his natural drawl. "I musta severely unnerestimated Jeremy Brown's hittin' ability."

"I just don't see it," says the vocal scout.

"That's all right," says Billy. "We're blending what we see but we aren't allowing ourselves to be victimized by what we see."

This argument is fat, slobby ignorance vs. Billy Beane, the grinning badass who's here to shake up the game whether scouts can handle it or not.

I have no doubt that baseball was and probably still is full of backwards neanderthals who think computers are the devil. I've seenTrouble With The Curve. The problem is the assumption that ALL skeptics are as backwards and ignorant as they seem in Moneyball. The movie or the book. Both popularized this movement more than pretty much anything else, and both give the impression that anyone who's not on board is missing the boat on the future.

So, I Googled Jeremy Brown. After the A's shocked everyone and took him in the first round, Brown played in five major league games before retiring in 2006.

Which brings us to the other side of what's incredible about this movement: Analytics experts are never wrong. All weekend long in Boston, we hear the same refrain. It's about process, not outcome. Quantitative analysts ("quants") can only tell you what shouldwork.

This ignores the obvious problem: There is so much data that if you're working to sift through it all and make decisions, there will always be anomalies. Just like if you're scouting. Maybe data gives you slightly better odds, but there's going to be a whole lot of variance regardless when you're talking about quantifying humans. This is a lot of frenetic activity to get us to ... where, exactly?

The Morey quote above comes during a panel on "The Science Of Randomess," where everyone from Nate Silver to the Cleveland Browns' new president, Alec Scheiner, weigh in on what quants can't control. "You're not giving answers," says Scheiner, "You're saying 'I think we're more likely to do well if we do it this way.'"

All weekend long, there's an echo of the same theme: Trust the process, ignore the outcome. All you can do with analytics is shift the odds.

If there's genius on display at Sloan, it's this: When scouts or coaches or old school GMs get something wrong, it's an example of traditional scouting methods failing. When analytics get something wrong, it's "randomness" that you can't control. A small part of a much bigger process, and teams and fans should trust that process until they get a better outcome. Any skeptics must be simple-minded conservative talk radio reactionaries, eating giant chocolate chip cookies.

Speaking of which, every afternoon at Sloan features a buffet of giant cookies. Chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal. They are delicious.

● ● ●
“Team chemistry's complicated, right? It's different from sport to sport. It's been immeasurable for years. In baseball it's the locker room. Nick Swisher's a great example, right? ... Everyone talked about how he was a great locker room guy, right? He added locker room presence. Or Big Papi here in Boston. In soccer for a team like FC Barcelona, the players come up together for years and year, and they put a lot of time and energy into development of those players on the field, and off the field. They room together, they eat together, they study together. And then you see the result during games, you see them able to maintain possession longer than other squads. And then basketball. No bigger issue than the Lakers, or even before that in 2010, with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Everyone was wondering, could these alpha males come together and perform in a way that leads them to a championship?”~ DANIEL MCCAFFREY AND KEVIN BICKART, P.H.D., SYNCSTRENGTH

 

[KritNC]

And a nice quote by Stan :

“I don't think we're any more resistant to analytics stuff than a lot of the analytics people are to the viewpoints we have. A lot of you analytics people think that the game is a video game. That players will always react the way as your models say they will react. And we were talking 2-for-1. So, 2-for-1 situations at the end of the quarter. I've read the analytics on it, I know that's something that by the numbers we should do, and we didn't do it. Whether you agree with 2-for-1 or not, a guy races the ball up the floor at any time in the game, and jacks up some horseshyt shot. Look at the other four guys on the floor, that he's playing with. Every one of 'em's gonna be like, "What the heck?" They don't run back as hard, and now when you start the fourth quarter after the guy just did that in the third quarter, now the next guy who gets the ball says I'm jacking up the next one. One of the things in coaching is you're trying to create a style of play and a culture, that [says] 'This is how we play the game.' And every time you make an exception to that, and say, 'Okay this is how we play the game but not in this case. In this case you're allowed to throw up whatever crap you want.' Then you're breaking down your system a little bit. ... I'm not rejecting the analytics, I'm not even saying I'm definitely right, but there's another side to consider.”~ STAN VAN GUNDY, NBA COACH, DISGRUNTLED HEDGEHOG, AMERICAN HER

 

[Newzz]

Reason why I dont mess with advanced stats for real:

Top 15 PER averages in NBA history :

1) Michael Jordan
2) LeBron James
3) Shaquille O'Neal
4) David Robinson
5) Wilt Chamberlain
6) Chris Paul
7) Dwyane Wade
8) Bob Pettit
9) Tim Duncan
10) Neil Johnston
11) Charles Barkley
12) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
13) Magic Johnson
14) Karl Malone
15) Kevin Durant

Top 10 TS% in NBA History:

1) Artis Gilmore
2) Cedric Maxwell
3) James Donaldson
4) Adrian Dantley
5) Tyson Chandler
6) Reggie Miller
7) Charles Barkley
8) Magic Johnson
9) John Stockton
10) Brent Barry

 

[The War Report]

You're not suppose to use one metric as the end all be all, jackass.

 

[Absolut]

i guess the all time fg % is a better list of shooters? not sure what exactly your point is


1. Tyson Chandler .5836
2. Shaquille O'Neal .5823
3. Artis Gilmore* .5819
4. Mark West .5803
5. Dwight Howard .5774
6. Steve Johnson .5722
7. Darryl Dawkins .5720
8. James Donaldson .5706
9. Bo Outlaw .5673
10. Jeff Ruland .5637

 

[ryderldb]

Reason why I dont mess with advanced stats for real:

Top 15 PER averages in NBA history :

1) Michael Jordan
2) LeBron James
3) Shaquille O'Neal
4) David Robinson
5) Wilt Chamberlain
6) Chris Paul
7) Dwyane Wade
8) Bob Pettit
9) Tim Duncan
10) Neil Johnston
11) Charles Barkley
12) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
13) Magic Johnson
14) Karl Malone
15) Kevin Durant

Top 10 TS% in NBA History:

1) Artis Gilmore
2) Cedric Maxwell
3) James Donaldson
4) Adrian Dantley
5) Tyson Chandler
6) Reggie Miller
7) Charles Barkley
8) Magic Johnson
9) John Stockton
10) Brent Barry

PER ain't too bad.

 

[Absolut]

PER ain't too bad.

seriously. not sure what his point was

 

[Newzz]

You're not suppose to use one metric is the end all be all, jackass.

You dont supposed to use that PERIOD in basketball clown


Those advanced stats are something for you nerds to use to feel better about watching basketball. Real basketball heads dont need that.


All that matters, as far as stats are PPG, RPG, APG, SPG, BPG, FG%, FT%, 3pt%.

All that other garbage, keep it to yourself in wack ass baseball

 

[Newzz]

seriously. not sure what his point was

David Robinson 4th all-time......Kareem Abdul Jabbar 12th all-time

Chris Paul 6th all-time......Magic Johnson 13th all-time


You dont see any problems with that, like, at all breh?

 

[MegaTronBomb!]

The biggest problem with this is that once players get a "clutch" or "choker" reputation, it's nearly impossible to shed. People will place more weight on the plays/results that back-up their preconceptions while dismissing those that refute it.

See: Derek Jeter, 2001 World Series.

you also had the super nerd stat boys deciding what determines "clutch" and broke it down to a certain time period in the 4th quarter and some point differential...and to prove how LeBron James is/was clutch...despite every instance of us seeing that he imploded/came up short when it truly mattered, or passed up an open shot all cause he was trying to be efficient and rack up stats.

same shyt with Tony Romo, and that's how the QBR rating came about...always comes up short when it matters, but ESPN wanted to push to us that he's still an elite QB and that the numbers prove it.

numbers never lie, but they also can prove anything you want them to.

 

[Absolut]

not in the slightest. its a singular measurement. its not supposed to be the end all be all, which is what we are saying in the thread. its one of the many tools used to analyze players. why wouldnt you use it in conjunction with other things? you know why you wouldnt? because kobe isnt in that top 15, so you disregard it completely. THATS why. you posted the ts% all time rankings. does that top ten not include better overall shooters than the all time top ten fg%, which consists of all down low players?

 

[Newzz]

not in the slightest. its a singular measurement. its not supposed to be the end all be all, which is what we are saying in the thread. its one of the many tools used to analyze players. why wouldnt you use it in conjunction with other things? you know why you wouldnt? because kobe isnt in that top 15, so you disregard it completely. THATS why

Yeah, because Kobe


Whatever helps you sleep better at night breh


The list is bogus and only nerdy ass nikkas throw out dumb ass stats like that. THATS why.