Stat Guru Dean Oliver to leave Nuggets for ESPN

[mnWI]

I'm sure some of you are familiar with Dean and his book basketball on paper. He has been working for the Nuggets for the past few years, but I spoke with him tonight and he will be taking his talents to ESPN for the time being, and he'll be doing analysis on multiple sports. I look forward to seeing what type of content he'll be producing.

[jman3134]

Thanks for the update. How involved do you think he will be with college basketball?

[DSMok1]

Was he fed up with the situation in Denver? Had they stopped taking his advice? Denver's in a pickle right now.

[mnWI]

Nah, he's left the door open to return to Denver in the future. No issues there. Not sure what the extent of his analysis will be.

[Doctor MJ]

It's interesting. I fear the reality is that stat guys on NBA teams don't get treated all that well. More "Do this." than "What do you think?". Can't wait to see more analysis from Oliver. There's no one in APBRmetrics I respect more.

[Chicago76]

From what I've gathered in brief conversations with a few of these guys (not Oliver), the role varies a ton team to team or even from GM/Coach to GM/Coach on the same team. Selfishly, I'm kind of hoping that Oliver didn't get to do all of the things he wanted to but was close enough to the film/data/technology available to teams to develop a lot of new stuff. The reason being that anything he developed on behalf of a franchise might be protected from disclosure, whereas if he simply got a lot of ideas he couldn't implement, then these things might not be protected and would therefore be more sharable to the broader community via ESPN.

This would probably be good for him too. Hopefully he gets a nice paycheck from ESPN while doing more of what he wants to do. It could also allow him to show more of his new stuff in the public domain, which could increase his clout/rep among other teams that could want him down the road.

[Nutty Nats Fan]

Nah, he's left the door open to return to Denver in the future. No issues there. Not sure what the extent of his analysis will be.

If you are able to speak to him? I would love to know what he thought about the way GK plays guys (Allen, DJ, AC) who fail the eyeball test and who stats say are awful. Did GK just completely ignore him when he pointed out how f'ed up GK's rotations have been?

[Doctor MJ]

Oliver's post on APBRmetrics board:

http://www.sonicscentral.com/apbrmetric ... 4674899cef

Beginning 2/7, I will be moving to ESPN in Bristol, CT. I will be Director of Production Analytics - developing and implementing analytic methods across all sports.

This will be fun to watch.

[Shinyhubcaps]

I'm interested to see what comes of this. ESPN has been slowly moving toward statistical analysis, especially with ESPN Next Level, but even that is just something that throws out a bunch of stats without any ground or bearing. They're finally catching up on splits, +/-, and some other relatively basic stats, and it would be cool if people actually understood a lot of the more advanced stuff.

[Jimmy76]

I'm interested to see what comes of this. ESPN has been slowly moving toward statistical analysis, especially with ESPN Next Level, but even that is just something that throws out a bunch of stats without any ground or bearing. They're finally catching up on splits, +/-, and some other relatively basic stats, and it would be cool if people actually understood a lot of the more advanced stuff.

all I'm asking for is pace adjustment

just that and I'll be happy

[UGA Hayes]

This should be interesting. It sounds like he is going to be something of a production guy. At first I thought you meant as a writer. I for one think this would be a very positive move by ESPN.