Hollinger to the Grizzlies Front Office

[Off-Season God]

Completely agree, Tornicade. Memphis is not being at all revolutionary. They are just catching up with what the rest of the league (bad teams and good teams) has been doing for many years.

In some cases, like Morey, you have a stats guy pretty much running things. In other cases, they are on staff, working in conjunction with old-school scouts.

I feel like all the metrics haters are like the guys around the table doubting Brad Pitt's player prospects to sign for the upcoming seasn. Just a bunch of old-school guys who think they know it all and have seen it all, so they can't learn anything new.



RchfldCavRaised is the one behind the black guy. Birdy is the guy in the back with the blue jacked and glasses.

I really don't get all the hate for metrics though. I feel like some people are offended by them and shun them because it wasn't around when they grew up and that it somehow invalidates what they were taught and have lived out, thus threatening their knowledge and experience. I don't think that advanced metrics have been perfected, but they're improving in their prediction rates more and more every year, coming closer to really being able to show value and flaws in players that no one else can see. Metrics are great for telling things how they are. But there certainly are limitations to how much metrics can be beneficial. Advanced metrics cannot teach a player how to do a hook shot, play defense, read the passing lanes, etc. This is where old-school experience comes in. Advanced metrics backing up the teachings of experience is going to be more powerful than arrogantly based experience alone. Guys need to embrace advanced metrics as a powerful tool for making sense of players and the game of basketball.

[Obawan12]

Even if you take away his statistics, i would still take john hollinger's subjective analysis of players/teams over 99.9% of this board. The guy watches 100's of basketball games a year. He says he tries to see every team in person at least once. Just because he uses statistics heavily doesn't mean he doesn't understand all the other non-statistical aspects of the game. The guy knows his fucking shit.

As a stats guy who read his articles on a daily basis for the past 4 to 5 years, it sucks that he's done writing, but i'm happy for him and hope he finds success.

[shoes22]

Isn't Hollinger the guy who invented PER? He's already made a significant and permanent contribution to basketball statistics and culture.

[Walter White]

This guy is like the only opinion I respect when it comes to NBA stuff. Literally.

[Off-Season God]

This guy is like the only opinion I respect when it comes to NBA stuff. Literally.

Windy? :O

[Walter White]

Windy? :O

Ya I thought about that later and forgot about him but I didn't think anyone would catch it.

[Phills14]

If you use advanced metrics as your sole source of evaluating talent and compiling a team, you are setting yourself up for problems. As someone said, advanced metrics should be used as a tool in the evaluation process. It should factor into decisions not make decisions. You can't substitute the old fashion eye ball test, market conditions, player behaviors and interpersonal relationships, contract negotiations, and feel for simply advanced metrics. Likewise, you can't just go on gut without some statistical information to back you up anymore. The game has changed, advanced metrics challenges conventional thinking and makes talent evaluators take a step back and gain perspective.

There are guys on each end of the spectrum. Daryl Morley is perceived as a true stat guy and he has not been very successful so far. On the other end, a guy who relied 100% on gut or feel was Isiah Thomas. Thomas was playing fantasy basketball and had no concept of how the pieces fit together, all he saw was talent and surely the talent could work together.

I've always like Hollinger. I don't know what his role will be for the Grizz but I bet he will be pretty good. He's obviously very strong statistically but he's watched enough live action and been around the game long enough to know his theories can't be viewed in a bubble. He's not the stat geek sitting in his moms basement with a hot line to Chris Wallace telling him to dump Zach Randolph and Rudy Gay for Tristan Thompson and Donald Sloan because they look good in a formula.

On a side note, I met Bob Chaiken about 15 years ago. He used to live in Euclid. He created a sophisticated database program that was interesting to me at the time. He also created a simulation basketball game which still is one of the better ones I've run across, Bball Pro. He never kept up with the program and let it die but he used his database as the engine for the program. At the time I think he was doing some freelance work for the Cavaliers but he wasn't as well known in NBA circles as he is today.

[Jack Brickman]

I know some people around here loved him, but the next team that wins an NBA title with that advanced metrics stuff will be the first.

The NBA is, was and always will be driven by stars, and no amount of data fired into an Excel spread sheet is going to make all that much different in the grand scheme of things.

Good for him though for being able to parlay that stuff into a good paying job like that though.

Almost every team (really, I'm willing to bet every single team) uses advanced metrics to varying degrees. No one here is arguing it should be the only thing you use to evaluate players, but it should definitely be a significant factor.

[Lee]

I love how many say they are happy for him. Well I don't know Hollinger personally so I really am being overly PC if I say I am happy for him. What I can say is that I am sad for me because I loved his writing.

[shoes22]

Windy? :O

I see Windy as more of a reporter than an analyst. Windy is among the best at what he does, though.

[MRMsix6]

His spawn like Daryl Morey tried all the advanced metric/Billy Bean shit for a few years and now he is resigned to doing whatever he can to attract stars, along with having James Harden recruiting more stars throughout the season.

I hope he doesnt get cute and kill what the Grizzlies have going. They seem to have things going pretty well without his advanced metrics. Jerry West really put them in a position to have a perennial contender for a good decade by knowing what it takes to win and using his wealth of knowledge of the game to put the roster together. Golden State looks good as well.

From a purist standpoint, his metrics are fun to talk about over coffee or if we were playing the game with basketball cards and dice, but this league is too much about ratings and dollars to ever feature anything other than the best talent on the biggest stages.

Advanced statistics are just another tool to help evaluate things that happen on a court. The more information you have available to you to inform decisions, the better. Stats and traditional scouting ARE NOT mutually exclusive, yet people against stats seem to believe this is the case. Nearly every team is using them in some way or another at this point because they'd be foolish not to.

Algorithms and spreadsheets can point out trends that may not be apparent to "the eye test". Human beings are not perfect, and can't come close to processing every single thing that's happening on a basketball court, or any field of play. They aren't meant to replace traditional scouting, but enhance it. Stats are not biased. Humans are. The suggestion that advanced stats should be some sort of cute side-game irrelevant to the decision making process is straight out of the 1980's. Scouts and statisticians having been working in concert for decades now in professional sports. And what do we see today? More and more teams adopting statistical departments. It's not a war between methodologies, it's an evolution.

Somewhat ironically, James Harden is an advanced stats darling. Yet you make it sound like Morey threw away his hard drive and said, "fuck it, let's get the big name!"

[RchfldCavRaised]

RchfldCavRaised is the one behind the black guy. Birdy is the guy in the back with the blue jacked and glasses.

I AM the black guy. He was pretty fly in the movie. I dont think he said 2 words but he just sat there like he knew his shit.

And for the record... Billy has yet to get a title without obtaining a few stars.

I want it to succeed. I want an even playing field for all teams with money not being a factor. Fans deserve it. But the system needs overhaul. Anything else is just a bandaid, including trying to find workarounds for obtaining stars in a league that is star based.

Fix the economics and even the playing field, and then I will open my heart to giving advanced metrics maybe a 10-20% share of my player evaluation process. In the meantime, stop trying to cure cancer with aspirin. Small market teams are going to start hiring NASA Engineers next.

[RchfldCavRaised]

Somewhat ironically, James Harden is an advanced stats darling. Yet you make it sound like Morey threw away his hard drive and said, "fuck it, let's get the big name!"

I stayed up a few nights watching James Harden "Ball So Hard" at Arizona State. The Sun Devils STUNK, like UCLA right now, but I turned them on just to watch old man game do his thing. Fun to watch, a good second option, but he is not a max guy or a franchise player. Horrible example. I could tell you that without stats at all, just by watching his game. And he fits horribly next to their biggest FA acquisition.

What you need to find to make the case, is guys who did not dominate on the college level but because of advanced metrics, were found late or considered reaches in the draft, and are now playing beyond what the eye test already established to be their career trajectory. I can watch a guy and tell you how his game would compliment another guy.

[JawJuttinAsasin]

Completely agree, Tornicade. Memphis is not being at all revolutionary. They are just catching up with what the rest of the league (bad teams and good teams) has been doing for many years.

In some cases, like Morey, you have a stats guy pretty much running things. In other cases, they are on staff, working in conjunction with old-school scouts.

Memphis formerly employed Barzali, who now works for the 76ers, and maintains the basketballvalue.com site.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...at-geek-speaks

[MRMsix6]

I stayed up a few nights watching James Harden "Ball So Hard" at Arizona State. The Sun Devils STUNK, like UCLA right now, but I turned them on just to watch old man game do his thing. Fun to watch, a good second option, but he is not a max guy or a franchise player. Horrible example. I could tell you that without stats at all, just by watching his game. And he fits horribly next to their biggest FA acquisition.

What you need to find to make the case, is guys who did not dominate on the college level but because of advanced metrics, were found late or considered reaches in the draft, and are now playing beyond what the eye test already established to be their career trajectory. I can watch a guy and tell you how his game would compliment another guy.

The case has already been made over and over again, and NBA front offices around the league agree that advanced metrics are highly useful. That's great that your eyes can identify good players. So can most people. Can your eyes also tell you the exact percentage that a particular player shoots from a specific spot on the floor? Or what the expected points per possession of a player is when operating out of a specific offensive set or game situation? How about whether it's worth keeping a certain player on the floor at the end of games despite poor free throw shooting? Knowing these numbers can help inform specific strategy decisions. There's nothing to be proud of by not knowing these numbers.

What I'm hearing from you is that you, with just your two eyes, can analyze every little thing that happens on a court. Advanced stats are about far more than identifying which players are good.