Analytics: The Pandora’s Box of NBA Basketball
So during this piston season actually before this piston season Monty Williams got asked a question by my friend and beat writer for the Pistons Mike Curtis Curtis asked him about analytics and Monty Williams said that he used to find them annoying but some numbers are good like defensive field goal
Percentage and the problem with him saying that is that defensive field goal percentage is not really the best stat to go off on and it got me thinking to the NBA and the analytics movement and how many players or coaches have been for or against the analytics movement I
Know that when it first popped off a decade like about a decade ago the first popped off a lot of coaches were like I don’t need data and computers telling me how I should run my basketball team and I know that some coaches have been more accept receptive of it than others I
Think um I want to credit Mike D anony for like realizing that a James Harden isolation was the best play that they could run so they just spammed it an entire seasons for entire seasons and it yielded great results up until a point um there’s articles about the Warriors
They had a numbers guy during the entire part of their first half of their Dynasty right I think that guy now works for the wizards but it got me thinking it’s like why do people like Charles Barkley hate analytics why do certain NBA players like don’t like it
Especially players that like don’t play in the league anymore I feel like you don’t really hear current NBA players talking about analytics as much it’s very fascinating to me for those of you that are new here welcome in and for those of you that know me welcome back
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It um and let’s get to the rest of the video as someone that works at secret base it would be weird to say that I didn’t like numbers I love statistics I love numbers I love data entry I love every form of data journalism there is because I feel like data journalism and
In data and statistics and analytics it helps to tell a story right it’s not the story but it helps to tell a story in my opinion and I think that that’s where uh NBA battle between analytics and not analytics kind of gets a little bit lost because one side
Thinks that people think that analytics are the endall Beall right and the other side is like yeah maybe analytics analytics is the future analytics is the future of basketball and it’s interesting that you have certain NBA teams that have analytics coaches I don’t know if every NBA team has an analytics coach right
Now um and even if they do or don’t I’m never going to really figure out how much the team uses and values analytics I think the learning curve for analytics is very steep as someone that has watched basketball for about 28 years like I’ve only really gotten into analytics and stuff like
That or like learning about these stats uh four or five years ago you know even then it’s really tough because not every Stat or analytic is explained and I feel like for some people that don’t like math it gets to be really confusing so I feel like if it
Was possible I mean and there are a lot of sites now that really do the stats and details and NBA analytics very well like cleaning the glass Synergy play-by-play stats there are so many like sites that do really cool stuff with MBA data and and uh data like that
In terms of lineup configurations in terms of onof in terms of uh usage rate effective field goal percentage in terms of true shooting in terms of all of that um it’s really cool to have those resources but I feel like those resources aren’t really publicized as
Much as they should be if I had to guess I feel like these analytic sites are made for like journalists and teams and Scouts in mind um but if there are fans that really do want to get into the data part of it there are paid options in
Some range from like $5 a month to um I think Synergy is like $35 a month but both of them offer like great insight into the NBA which really helps me as someone that is a content creator trying to cover all of these players and teams while trying to still sound like
Smart intelligent and educated cuz if you do the math bro it is really hard for someone like me to keep tabs on 30 NBA teams for 82 games and I’ve already talked about this in a video where I was like everyone’s technically really a casual fan but analy has really helped
Me in terms of just being able to research players and how good they are in pick and roll how good they are in late dribble handoff and how good they are in certain situations in basketball and I find that really fascinating um and I think that we will
Get to a point one day in the league where Analytics are the norm like they’re welcomed by everyone um to where because I feel like right now we might have a couple of we have might have some coaches in the league that they played in the era without analytics and then
Analytics came in and now they’re like don’t tell you don’t tell me how to run my team but I feel like one day we might grow to be in a league where everybody grew up learning about analytics or uh maybe analytics goes through college but I feel like college basketball if
College basketball if everyone in college basketball had access to and believed in analytics I the game would look way different it would look more like how Alabama or Yukon plays versus like traditional teams you know and I think the cool thing is in 2024 as I make this
Video there are so many different data and analytic sites that are just made and out there and I really think that it’s been a net positive for how people can see the game and I know it’s not the be all end all that whatever it is I’m never going
To use just analytics in a debate and be like yep that’s it that’s over because analytics and stats and they they all involve context right to where like you look at K Cunningham stats this year and they may pale in comparison is someone that he’s compared to from his draft
Class like a uh you know Scotty Barnes or an Evan MO but you got to understand that Kade Cunningham there’s also the situation that Kade Cunningham is around he’s not in the best situation NBA playerwise so I honestly think that taking that stuff with a grain of salt
Is for the best I wish there there are sometimes where coaching decisions you can see that they aren’t listening to the analytics and listening to the data because sometimes coaching decisions just do not make sense a clear example this year is when Monty Williams was starting Isaiah livers and Killian Hayes
And as as a fan as someone that covers basketball but as someone that’s not an expert it didn’t take me that long to just Google and find a site that had the onoff lineup stats needed to realize and just show that killing Hayes and Isaiah livers by like almost every stat
Imaginable were not a good pair however Monty still believed and felt the need to start them it only took a Piston’s trade for actually trading Isaiah livers for Mony Williams to move on to something new I know I’m going into a new tangent here but I feel like there
Is a semblance of when a coach is ignoring the data and ignoring the analytics and and I feel like analytics are giving fans more ammo to support their points you know because a lot of fans could pay $5 a month or whatever to have this site and there’s a lot of free
Data sites as well that I’m going to list in the description but a lot of fans are going to be able to be like hey we should be doing this this and this and here are the stats to back it up I don’t know why this coaches and I think
That that’s really cool I think that that’s really cool for the NBA and the game as a whole because while fans shouldn’t make team decisions and I’m not saying that fans should have a seat at the table I think that it’s leading to better information better
Discussion and it also helps and adds to what I like about basketball coverage where you know a regular broadcast well some TV broadcasts actually put analytics into uh the game now or whatnot or they’ll put it in the game broadcast or they’ll put it in their
Coverage I think it varies from game to game and Charles Barkley hates Analytics he’s been on the record saying that but I do think that there are a lot of great people in basketball media that love watching the X’s and O’s and love breaking down the film and the analytics
Further supports their film breakdowns and it’s a really interesting way of digesting content in forms of not just being like this player is bad this player is playing really bad right now they need to step it like first if first take had analytics in their like analytics
Segments in their show I would be more receptive to watching that show like because I feel like a lot of sports debate shows and tv shows will often just they’ll use like surface level stats and I feel like there need to be more of an experimentation of using more advanced stats and introducing
Audiences two more advanced stats to help support their points or whatnot I feel like that would be that would be my like wish list of things yeah I feel like learning about analytics is a different journey in terms of like yeah there’s a lot to there’s a lot of numbers it is
Intimidating but when you try to understand or like try to make an effort to understand like one set at a time and it kind of comes to you easy year it really has helped me see the game differently and like think about the game differently versus like other forms of
Basketball coverage and stuff like that
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38 Comments
You've been killing it with the videos
Analytics try to explain the games that they're in more and better. Yet, I keep getting the feeling that most of them miss the point of the games they're in. Sure, a shooting percentage doesn't tell you as much as true shooting (since True Shooting also weighs the 3 point shot 1.5 times more than a 2). Steph's best years have a True Shooting north of 60%, when his standard percentage is hovering north of 50%.
But, there's also the arguments where Jokic in recent years are said to have won MVPs based on his analytics rather than his actual production (I remember that being a conversation after the 2022 MVP). They have a place, but I also feel they're overused and can't necessarily give you a full picture of a player/team/league.
My one issue with analytics is that it has created a lot of lazy sports discourse. Many fans don't understand the mechanics of the sports that they enjoy, but they understand numbers. It amazes me how often you run into sports fans who will spew all types of stats at you, but have clearly rarely (if ever) watched the teams and players that they have such strong opinions about. Same with a lot sports journalists
The thing is… The eye test is also important. And some numbers are harder to use. And numbers need context. A coach that never uses numbers to do anything is certainly wrong. Not liking something you don't understand is naturally what our monkey brains do.
I blame the soon to be former Oakland athletics
I know I am dating myself here. The great majority of the arguments I have been in about analytics have been with baseball fans, more than all the other sports combined. The baseball fans that confront me with analytics donât seem interested in having any kind of a real discussion. They just seem interested in lording it over me that I donât follow analytics and if you bring up an âold timesâ statistic like batting average you should here how loud these baseball analytics guys get. I donât think this will get bigger over time because as we do get into an era where everyone alive was born after sports analytics that will be a closed off community of know it alls.
What I appreciate here and in Secret Baseâs more analytical videos is the effort made towards presenting and explaining the numbers in a way that allows the layperson behind the curtain so to speak, teaching them what these numbers mean, why theyâre valuable, and also why they might not matter in the long run.
I want to work for secret base
"It's just stats." – Charles Barkley
Thanks, Chuck
As a lifelong baseball fan whoâs been getting into basketball more this year, what you said about context is spot on. Analytics are extremely valuable in evaluating players but if you look at numbers and donât give them context then their usefulness takes a big hit. Also at least with baseball people wanna narrow a players worth down to one statistic and thatâs just not how it works. Thereâs multiple stats for a reason you need them all to evaluate a player.
Speaking of advanced stats, when are we going to acknowledge Cade's poor winshares and box plus minus?
Cade is not talented enough to make Detroit a playoff team.
look, and i say this as an analyst, there's room for numerous approaches to decision-making in sports. analytics is at its best for situations with larger samples, so it's at its strongest when you're talking about a general offensive focus in the nba. however, it does not take human things into account, like fatigue, confidence, etc. analytics is an opportunity/weakness finder, not a unilateral decisionmaker.
How amazing would it be if sports media educated fans on how to better understand what they watch? Most people don't see anything but PPG, Reb, Ast.
It's hilarious to be considered a casual fan if I watch every Lakers game while also enjoying other bball commentary LOL.
Keep making these videos that are around 10 minutes long pla
Stats in the wrong hands leads to errors
Glad I found your channel yesterday.
Enjoy your "short form/daily upload" stuff over the long time to make longform stuff, which much of this isn't suitable for.
I love the NBA TNT guys. But letâs be real none of them are actual analysts theyâre just color commentary to entertain casual fans and casual fans believe what they say cause people like Barkley and Shaq and Kenny used to play. But if you actual pay attention to their takes theyâre either superficial âthey gotta play betterâ or theyâre just flat out wrong and ill informed âI wasnât familiar with your game.â Barkley doesnât like analytics cause people can call him out if heâs wrong and now more people have access to information meaning he canât seem as smart about the game purely cause he payed it a high level. Not to mention a lot of old school players very clearly donât understand how the game is played now a days and that leads to them not having the best takes. Analytics isnât the end all be all, but if youâre against analytics youâre just shooting yourself in the foot because more information leads to better informed decisions, I think an active player should have some semblence of what the analytics are but more importantly I think the coaching staff should definitely know so that they can properly manage their team and draft up proper players, thatâs not to say you wonât try âinferiorâ plays but itâs important to recognize what the data is so you can at least make an informed decision.
Basketball is a game of "feel".
One on one we may not be equal, but my speed may counter your height and vice versa.
That's where the "creativity" comes to play – Jordan (switching hands, reverse, hang time) > Shaq (power dunk).
But today, there just making "assembly lime" players – little creativity, just limited ability.
Chase on of DAL 3pt shooters off the line and they're pretty much useless – only Luka and Kyrie have any dribble game.
Modern players don't complain BECAUSE THEY WANT JOBS!!!!
So they just do the things their prospective employer wants, and would be somewhat stupid not to (for fear of not being employed)
Gone are the days of "pickup" and "King of the court".
Now it's all organised ball or specific workouts.
I find it REALLY BORING that most teams play the same (heliocentric) way.
I like my last champion Spurs – ultimate ball movement for easy open looks, not one guy dominating the ball for a triple-double.
So while analytics maybe useful, it's become everything.
Used to be Cleveland didn't play like LAL cos "Cavs don't have Showtime players".
So the Cavs played defence.
And commentators wondered if Gund Arena scoreboard evem reached triple digits…
Now it's ALL about "outscoring them"!!
"They're gonna put up 125pts, so we need shoot more 3s"
I can't imagine 2004 Pistons in/of this era
If as a sports fan you outright reject analytics, youâre actively hurting yourself because of your fear of math and nerds. If you are basing your decision solely on numbers, you donât understand what analytics are and the limitations of statistics. Analytics and stats are a tool just like any other, and knowing there values and weaknesses should be way more emphasized than how people just quoting eff or plus minuses, which I think is what people who âhate analyticsâ really hate.
I stopped taking analytics seriously when chronically online people kept telling me Nikola Jokic is already better than Lebron and Jordan all-time because of âthe numbersâ
Ur vids are interesting Asf
The key to analytics (in every sport) is that coaches can't become slaves to it. You'll see "analytically minded" coaches make these baffling calls because they're "based on the numbers".
The problem there is that analytics don't replace any of the classic coaching skills (instinct, decision making, calmness, people management, etc), they refine them, direct them and inform them.
Hi Kolfie question when is the next Fumble Dimension on Secret Base
My latest conspiracy theory:
Troy Weaver is betting on the outcome of specific games, and can guarantee wins by trading with a team immediately before playing them, to ensure they're short-handed.
Chuck is hinting to the point of a game. What's the purpose of a game? To Win. By how much? Doesn't matter because only the win counts in the record. So a game of 40 to 39 green wins and 60 to 59 green wins. Has the same result. Of course in on of those games some player will have higher stats but that's because more scoring occurred. If both of those games are I. The same season against the same team what would analytics tell you? That's why over emphasized stats is missing the point.
The logo on the hoodie looks like a christian Nazi symbol lol Like a cross mixed with a swastika .
Ik it's not that and I'm probably just to online but still đ
Analytics are only useful for people who understand the game and can put things in context. For everyone else, they are a liars tool
Time to add an end card. Maybe just a cheeky transition to channel logo. đ
Analyze: to watch and explain how something happens. To break it down in such a way that laymen can understand it…
Data: stuff that has already happened…
Data analytics: using stuff that has already happened, to explain to laymen how it happened… And how it might happen again based on trends in the what already happened… It's not rocket science it's data entry…
Monty Williams is a terrible Coach
As an analyst, I've tried to keep my analytics dosage for basketball low, just to separate my business and pleasure, but it is time to let the data in.
I remember when my older brother had been playing a lot of Madden and had learned a lot of fancy moves and stuff with it. I'd never played it before, but I sat down to play with him and was running the goofiest stuff possible just for laughs, and I quickly found a broken game mechanic. On offense, if you had a decent QB and receivers, you could run what they called a fly pattern, just four dudes sprinting for the end zone and heave the ball down the field, and you'd hit it for six points roughly once every four to six tries. Maybe even one in four. So I'd just spam it. Fourth and inches? Fly pattern. Touchdown! My brother was mad. Anyway, that's what it was like watching the NBA during peak cheat-code Harden times.
So what bothered me for a long time with the analytics community is that they were effectively the same as conspiracy theorists, but with numbers. If you brought in anything outside their scared circle that pointed out that maybe their data wasn't correct, they bluntly ignored it. I remember engaging with one of these guys in a forum (that's how far back this goes. Before the dead bird site.) who was on an NBA staff as their analytics guy, and he was trying to say Knicks-era Tim Thomas was one of the top guys in the league despite the fact that the team was under .500 when he played, and the team shot worse in games he was in. His response was that the formula said Tim Thomas was elite, therefore HE WAS ELITE.
The other thing that always irked me was the guys that tried to endlessly bang the drum of saying that "the hot hand doesn't exist" when the hot hand definitely DOES exist. The initial data analysis they used for this was one nerd long ago running stats for the season for JUST THE 76ers to see whether or not a guy sunk the first free throw in a 2 shot situation, whether he had a better chance of hitting the second. Because, you know, that's totally the definition of "hot hand" that we're all using. Dude sinks two free throws and we're all doing the "I can't feel my face". So not only does this nerd just flat out not understand what we're talking about, so he redefines the term to make his data correct, but also someone immediately followed up with an analysis of a whopping 2 seasons of data, and showed that there WAS a small correlation between hitting the first and hitting the second FT. There are even more in-depth analyses of the hot hand now, showing that the hot hand exists, so long as you're shooting from the same spot. There's also a change in brain waves that can be measured when players feel "in the zone", but nobody in the community wanted to hear it.
I feel like we've finally gotten to a good balance. We've had enough high profile analytics "failures" where people can see that you can't just run a team based on picking the bigger percentage numbers. So nobody needs to talk about their secret sauce anymore, and nobody's using it as a justification for their stupidity in key situations.
Former players who are analysts on TV/radio donât like analytics because they want to maintain the idea that the only way to truly understand the game is to play it on a high level. They hate that someone whoâs 5â7â and couldnât crack his varsity team in high school might understand the game better (at least in some sense) than they do.
We saw the exact same response from former baseball players.
I think the opposition to analytics is so heavy because people who promote it talk about it as if its objective.
I think analytics are a great way for non-experts (aka 99% of fans in any sport) to better understand players and teams without having to watch hundreds of hours of film. Honestly I donât know how anyone could analyze many sports debates without analytics. Like âwhoâs better Charles Barkley or Karl Malone?â âWell in the three games Iâve watched of both of them, Karl Malone played better so thatâs whoâs betterâ.
To disregard analytics because they arenât perfect is to incorrectly assume that you have more expertise than you actually do.
As someone who is a casual basketball fan but absolutely loves football (soccer). Football is behind most American sports in analytics so we are just starting the analytics age while you guys are already drep in it. i think too many people present analytics as the answer when it should be a guide. It isn't the gospel truth instead it is part of a truth and the eye test is the other part of fhe truth.