It's Sunday Night And You're Glen Taylor

Sorry about the lateness of this:

To your first paragraph, I believe the reverse is true. I believe statistics should drive common knowledge, rather than simply used to enforce it. To start with, statistics are, or should be, objective. They should represent a truth about what is happening. Simply, if the common knowledge disagrees, and the data is correct, then common knowledge is wrong. An example: one of the key bits of common knowledge in baseball is that you should have a speed guy as your leadoff hitter. It doesn’t matter how well he hits, because if he’s on base, he can run like made from with the 2-3-4 hitters coming up. And it turned out that was completely wrong (not that teams still don’t do it, see Twins, Minnesota). The best thing to do is get the guy who can get on base the most as your leadoff man. Would you rather have Carlos Gomez (who got on base 28% of the time) or Joe Mauer (who got on base 41% of the time) leading off (bear in mind that the leadoff guy also gets the most at bats in a season)? As someone who doesn’t follow baseball, I imagine that decision is a lot easier for you than the average baseball fan.

To the second paragraph, I would say that knowing statistics helps us understand a great deal of the game. It’s a major part of the striving to have knowledge. And this information doesn’t have to start from observation. Take the info on Jefferson’s turnovers. I didn’t notice anything about it, I just pulled up the numbers I crunched at the end of last season and noticed that Jefferson had a very low turnover rate. I did some more checking and found out he’s got the lowest turnover rate in the league among centers (those that count, anyway). And you know how I know that’s not something you can find by watching the game, no matter how intently they do it? Because nowhere has anyone ever mentioned it until then. Not Robson, Zogda, or anyone here. It’s something you can only see on a spreadsheet. Now, your point about the assists is well taken, and shows the problem with basketball stats: we don’t have enough good information. Personally, I find assists to be almost as useless as errors in baseball (long story short: it’s the most worthless statistic in the history of ever), but there simply isn’t very good information on ball movement in the NBA, and most of it is subjective. As for Jefferson specifically, I would guess that his inside-out game isn’t there because he hadn’t played on a team that shot the 3 until, literally, yesterday. Give him time

For the third one, I’d recommend reading Moneyball, or at least the intro to it. The intro is about Billy Beane, a player that possessed one of the best swings scouts had ever seen, and could play the field as well as anyone. The only reason he wasn’ t the #1 pick in his draft was guy named Darryl Strawberry was also in the mix. The problem was, he got utterly owned by the pitching in MLB, and essentially washed out after sporadic playing time in the majors. And it turned out you could see the Beane failure coming a mile away based on his minor-league stats. As for the nuanced comment, I’m not as comfortable speaking negatively about basketball writers, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that stats are the way to go in baseball. Here’s the usual setup: traditional writers will talk about teams doing things the right way, how they’re going to surprise people, etc., etc. Stats writers will do the same thing. 9 times out 10, the stats predictions will be right. Example: a month into the season, stats writers were saying that Tampa Bay was the real deal, while traditional writers were saying that the Rays were an aberration and won’t be at .500 by the end of the season. Turns out the Rays were good enough to make the World Series.

As for the Raptors, I saw this is exactly where statistics are needed. And while you’re right that single details, catch and shoot skill, floor spacing, etc., it applies to both teams. Take last night. Let’s say that instead of going 2-9 on free throws, Love goes 9-9, and at the end of the game Utah does an inbound and instead of Williams swiping the ball, Gomes hawks an inbound pass to Brewer, who is forced to throw up a prayer which barely touches rim. If the Wolves won in that fashion, would anybody be shocked? Would it mean Utah is a bad team? Would it mean Minnesota is a good team? No to all of those. Additionally, this only describes buzzer beaters. Even games that are close don’t necessarily result in such tight situations. And as I said, if you take a team over a few seasons, you’re going to see it pretty much come out to 50/50, even with identical personnel. Additionally, if you want to see why I trust the theoretical win loss, I would suggest you check out Basketball Reference. On the franchises’ season pages they have the theoretical w/l and the actual win/loss for every season. If you look at it (and remembering that it has a +/- margin of 3), you’ll see it does a very good job. So even if you don’t buy my defense of the Raptors, it’s a single aberration from the theory.

I hope this helps with understanding the stats point of view. Additionally, I would definitely recommend Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, which isn’t a stats book, but rather a history of statistics in baseball, and how it helps teams win. You don’t need to know a thing about baseball to enjoy it, and it’s a very good narrative. If you’re interested in an explanation of the how and why of modern stats in basketball, I would recommend Dean Oliver’s Basketball on Paper, especially if you don’t mind reading stats.