RealGM

There will be 1,230 NBA games this season. The Detroit Pistons want to watch every one.

The Pistons have four pro scouts, and that’s their job: Watch basketball. A lot of basketball. Two or three games a day, all season. Last year, they watched between 90-95% of NBA games, and for each one, they evaluated every player in the game in several categories, and entered their scouting reports into the team’s database. The Pistons want to know everything relevant about every player in the league—and really, about every NBA-quality player in the world.

The 2004 Pistons basically had five people in their front office: a general manager (Joe Dumars), his three closest confidantes (John Hammond, Scott Perry, George David), and an international scout (Tony Ronzone).
...
Now? The Pistons have Van Gundy, Bower, three assistant general managers, a basketball-operations director, four pro scouts, six college/international scouts, two analytics software engineers and a director of strategic planning. That’s 18 people.
That’s just the front-office increase. Then there are the various support people who have been added. Everywhere you look, you see more people. The 2004 Pistons had one video coordinator. The 2015 Pistons have three.

82-0: According to math, Pistons to make history

We are urged: "Try not to get too excited. It's only one game." In Hypnowheel's Pistons vs. Hawks recap, while warnings of caution seem reasonable, they ignore the numerous data points burbling under the surface of Game 1. Imagine, if you will, eating your favorite brand of potato chip. That crispy, crunchy morsel slathered in oil and just a sprinkle of salt atop the mounds of salt already on it... Yes, delicious isn't it? You reach in the bag for a second one. Why? Because potato chip number one was delicious, so you know potato chip number two is going to be the exact freaking same thing. All the potato chips in the whole bag are delicious and that's why you find yourself staring at the silvery glisten of the bottom of the bag with oil-drenched fingers and a guilt-drenched heart. Well, basketball games are like potato chips. Once you open a bag with a good one, you can chomp away happily knowing there are 81 more in the bag juuuust like it.

As a classically trained statistician (I took a statistics course for three weeks before dropping out from the school that statistical guru, Nate Silver, rooted for), I am quite cognizant of the fact that numbers don’t lie. The raison d’etre of statistics is to judge past performance to allow us to predict future performance. Using a self-created algorithm that is too advanced for the puny minds of my readership to wrap their squishy minds around, I have come up with a model that predicts various outcomes of the season based on the data we have already received. I call these statistics the On Pace For (OPF).

Here is what our OPF is showing thus far. Remember, this is math.These numbers are immutable, unblemishable, indentable, unscrutinizable, unwrinkleyournoseatthemmable. In short, this IS what will happen. The numbers say it is so and they are never wrong*:

ElectricMayhem wrote:I wrote this one after Game 1. It still mostly applies after game 2.

http://www.detroitbadboys.com/2015/10/28/9625318/pistons-projected-record-according-to-math

82-0: According to math, Pistons to make history

We are urged: "Try not to get too excited. It's only one game." In Hypnowheel's Pistons vs. Hawks recap, while warnings of caution seem reasonable, they ignore the numerous data points burbling under the surface of Game 1. Imagine, if you will, eating your favorite brand of potato chip. That crispy, crunchy morsel slathered in oil and just a sprinkle of salt atop the mounds of salt already on it... Yes, delicious isn't it? You reach in the bag for a second one. Why? Because potato chip number one was delicious, so you know potato chip number two is going to be the exact freaking same thing. All the potato chips in the whole bag are delicious and that's why you find yourself staring at the silvery glisten of the bottom of the bag with oil-drenched fingers and a guilt-drenched heart. Well, basketball games are like potato chips. Once you open a bag with a good one, you can chomp away happily knowing there are 81 more in the bag juuuust like it.

As a classically trained statistician (I took a statistics course for three weeks before dropping out from the school that statistical guru, Nate Silver, rooted for), I am quite cognizant of the fact that numbers don’t lie. The raison d’etre of statistics is to judge past performance to allow us to predict future performance. Using a self-created algorithm that is too advanced for the puny minds of my readership to wrap their squishy minds around, I have come up with a model that predicts various outcomes of the season based on the data we have already received. I call these statistics the On Pace For (OPF).

Here is what our OPF is showing thus far. Remember, this is math.These numbers are immutable, unblemishable, indentable, unscrutinizable, unwrinkleyournoseatthemmable. In short, this IS what will happen. The numbers say it is so and they are never wrong*:

Spoiler Alert: The article is about how we're going 82-0.

BadMofoPimp wrote:I should like to be get a Scout job.

bballnmike wrote:

BadMofoPimp wrote:I should like to be get a Scout job.

If I still lived in Michigan (grew up 5 minutes from the palace) I'd definitely apply for a software engineer position.