Culture of Hoops

Stan Van Gundy questions use of advanced stats

Image courtesy of RMTip21/Flickr.

Image courtesy of RMTip21/Flickr.

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Stan Van Gundy appeared as part of the basketball analytics panel at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on Friday, and while he isn’t opposed to coaches integrating advanced statistical data into their day-to-day operations, he was concerned about the particulars of how the data is acquired, and who, exactly, is responsible for sorting it all out.

Van Gundy posed legitimate questions that would theoretically need to be addressed before the basketball purists at the NBA level take the data as gospel, and making sure that whoever is identifying certain play types and quantifying them knows basketball, and is doing that job to the specifications of a particular head coach.

“I don’t trust most of it,” Van Gundy said, beginning an exquisite rant on the topic. “I read some of the stuff that people write on ESPN.com, you know, I’ll read stats on pick and roll defense and stuff that came off Synergy or somewhere else — I don’t know who the hell is recording that information!”

“I read a thing in the playoffs last year that said that New York isolated like 17 percent of the time,” he continued. “I’m watching their games, they isolate half of the time, at least. So I don’t know who’s recording that. If there’s a pick and roll, and they throw it back to Carmelo and he holds the ball and isolates for eight seconds, that’s a pick and roll play, not an isolation? And a lot of pick and roll stuff … you know, I read a thing today from ESPN the Magazine on Paul George being the best pick and roll defender in the league on the ball handler. Look, a lot of pick and rolls … there’s pick and rolls designed to score, and there’s pick and rolls you run to get into something else. If you’re recording it and you’re treating those two things the same, then you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Van Gundy really does like the additional available data — he just needs to be able to trust that whoever is compiling it has the same standards basketball-wise that he does. Ironically enough, I overheard a statistician type at one of the panel discussions explaining to a colleague that of course he watches games — but only to enhance his data set. Pro Basketball Talk

It warmed my heart for someone of reputation to finally call this out. I don’t hate advanced stats but some of them are incredibly bias or just pointless as currently used. Not long ago, I read a stat that claimed Dwight Howard had one of the lowest percentages of contested rebounds in the league. The statistician said that it proved that Howard was losing athleticism and not as good as he used to be. The idiocy of that for anyone who plays basketball in real life is that you get out of the way of the guy who is too physical, hence an uncontested rebound.

True shooting percentage and stuff like that is one thing, but assuming every executed pick and roll is not a faint, for example, really skews the data. – AL

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