Ted Leonsis proclaims belief in basketball analytics on radio

This is absolutely true, and it’s why having a strong background in basketball is essential for successful application of statistics in the decision-making process. If you don’t understand the context for the statistics, you’re bound to come to incredibly awful conclusions (see anything ever written by David Berri).

The future of the NBA (or for a select few teams, the present) is a front office of people with no attachment to conventional wisdom and who are equally well versed both in basketball and in analytics (statistical or otherwise). Having a GM who is an expert in scouting, statistical analysis, and the CBA, while also having a strong grasp of logic and big picture thinking in decision-making is becoming more and more essential.

Another thing of note here is the landscape of personnel management in basketball today is completely different from what it was 10 years ago. If a GM comes along citing his successful resume from the 1990’s, you should really take that with a grain of salt, because the playing field was completely different back then. Today there is a better understanding of statistical analysis, much more data available via tools like Synergy, and DVR/Synergy/DirecTV have completely changed the way teams can scout teams (it can be done so much more efficiently and comprehensively that a GM could theoretically have no staff and still thoroughly scout the entire draft class).

In the 90’s and prior, you pretty much had everyone with extensive regional scouting staffs, relying on second-hand information and gut feels for personnel decisions, and tons of bad decisions being made left and right. If you were a top 5 GM in that environment, it doesn’t mean you’re still capable of being a top 5 GM with the same methodology going up against Pritchard and Presti and Buford and Ferry and the rest, all of whom are integrating so much more into their decision-making processes and significantly elevating the level of competency around the league.

That’s not to say successful GM’s from that era can’t adapt and still remain on top (Buford’s been around a decent chunk of time and San Antonio has consistently adapted and evolved with the changing times), but you need to be open and honest with yourself and realize that the way the game is evaluated has evolved, and if you too don’t evolve, you’re going to be left in the dust.

I’d actually say inserting statistics into the decision-making process is incredibly easy once you have sufficient background in both areas and have a good logical process for decision-making. I also tend to find that interpreting raw data yourself is better than relying on a formula that does the interpretation for you by weighting statistics into some kind of composite metric. It’s not about statistics vs scouting. It’s not about me saying Gilbert Arenas is an amazing player and some random formula saying he sucks. On the other hand, evaluating a player’s strengths and weaknesses and then looking at raw data in relevant area can be helpful to either validate subjective analysis or make you question what you think you saw.

Statistics can tell me matter of factly what percentage of available offensive rebounds a player pulls down when he’s on the floor. They can tell me matter of factly what percentage of three-point shots a player hits. They can tell me matter of factly how many points per possession a player generates as the ball-handler in a pick-and-roll. It’s then up to me as the evaluator to interpret these facts, and determine how much of it is due to player ability and how much is due to context, such as the offensive rebounder playing with a frontcourt mate who is excellent at boxing out or the three-point shooter getting a ton of open looks via system-derived offense or the pick-and-roll man struggling because the bigs he’s running the play with don’t draw sufficient defensive attention on the roll.

If you can merge the two perspectives it just gives you more information to base your decision on, painting a more complete and accurate picture.

As for Kerr, I’ve never heard of him being an analytics-driven guy, and in fact I’ve heard the exact opposite. The Shaq trade was made primarily because Kerr was determined to tear apart the run-and-gun Suns and go to a more halfcourt-style offense (something that completely underutilized the strengths of the majority of the roster, namely Nash). Same reason he brought in an inferior coach in Terry Porter and then quickly fired him.