The front office (including Doc) and analytics

[MartinToVaught]

The Clippers have moved from nonbelievers to skeptics over the past year.

With new owner Steve Ballmer's willingness to spend, the Clippers hired Jud Winton as director of analytics and former Houston Rockets intern Greg Peim. Assistant director of scouting Jason Piombetti, who previously was the team's liaison to the analytics community, is also a believer.

The problem is the lack of buy-in from coach Doc Rivers, who is also the president of basketball operations, running the front office along with Kevin Eastman, Dave Wohl and former general manager Gary Sacks. None of the four has demonstrated much faith in basketball analytics, although Rivers has become an enthusiastic champion of Harvard professor Dr. Charles Czeisler's research on the value of sleep for NBA players. He's built the team's schedule around Czeisler's insights.

On the player acquisition side, the Clippers have tended to go after players with poor numbers who are overrated based on Rivers' experience with them. Byron Mullens, who had 25 points and 18 rebounds against the Celtics in 2012-13, signed with the Clippers the following season. That pattern has continued with the acquisition of former Celtic Glen Davis, former Eastern Conference stars Danny Granger, Antawn Jamison and Hedo Turkoglu and, most recently and infamously, Doc Rivers' son Austin Rivers.

With their new staff, the Clippers could rise in our ratings in the future, but only if their analytics efforts aren't undone by Rivers and a skeptical front office.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_ ... gs#nba-lac

Disappointing, and confirms my suspicions that this franchise is still too out-of-touch with the modern NBA. Let's hope Ballmer can change things in this regard. That being said, at least the Clippers aren't as bad as my Chargers

[TucsonClip]

This shouldn't be a surprise and has been well known.

The sad part is one would think Rivers would have noticed who Ainge surrounded himself to rebuild the Celtics. There was this guy named Daryl Morey once... After him there was a guy named Ryan McDonough... Ainge is a big believer in scouting and gut feelings on players, but he also trusts his analytics people to provide insight and suggestions.

This has been one of my biggest pet peeves outside of giving Rivers control over the organization.

[QRich3]

But Rivers has previously said several times in public how he has no problem using analytics, since back in his Boston days. I don't know exactly how much he uses them behind closed doors, but he has never been an anti analytics guy like most of the coaches from his generation. To be honest, reading how stupidly that ESPN article comes to the conclusion that Doc got Mullens just because he had a good game against him, it just seems like another biased piece to promote Doc-hate.

In any case, this is the sort of stuff Ballmer should be doing, it's one thing that Doc is the GM, it's a different one that he can be blamed for the structure of the whole organization. I'm the first to criticize him for being a sh*t GM, but it's another thing to make him the scape goat for everything the organization does bad.

[mkwest]

New age of NBA analytics: Advantage or overload?

Rivers, on the other hand, considers himself a proponent.

“There’s a really good use for it,” Rivers said. “There’s a use for us, each team, depending on how they play and how they defend. You can find out stuff.”

And while Ainge is also a proponent, he remains cautious.

“You have to be careful with how you utilize the information that you have,” Ainge said. “It is sort of fun and intriguing and I understand why media and the fans are intrigued by it all, but I think it’s blown way out of proportion of how much it’s actually utilized.”

But the debate about how useful the data are continues, though Rivers, who raised that question years ago, offered a simple analogy.

“It’s all part of the gumbo,” he said. “And the guys who use the most ingredients make the best gumbo.”

Baxter Holmes, Boston Globe (4/30/14)

NBA Analytics Aren't 'Crap,' as Barkley Put It, But They're Not Proven, Either

They’re too elusive to be described in a single word. “Analytics” is used, as I just did, to mean not only a mathematical analysis of sports, but those who use it. I submit the real definition should be “modes of mathematical analysis that no one thought up until now.”

I recently asked Clipper Coach Doc Rivers what he thought of analytics.

“You mean stats?” he said, laughing.

Rivers actually uses analytics, if selectively, but it’s true. They’re just fancy statistics, built on the basic numbers they used the day Dr. James Naismith went up that ladder at the Springfield YMCA: number of points, number of rebounds, et al.

Mark Heisler, Forbes (2/11/15)

A little info about sleep philosphy....

Three years ago Rivers met with sleep medicine specialist Dr. Charles A. Czeisler of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He canceled morning shootarounds on game days and pushed the start time of practices to noon.

It’s a philosophy he has brought over to the Clippers. Not only have players taken sleep studies, but they have also been tested to see what kinds of foods give them the most energy and what kinds of foods they should stay away from. Their pre- and postgame meals are now catered to reflect those results.

Arash Markazi, ESPN Los Angeles

Dynamics of the front office...

Doc Rivers' executive order in L.A.

"I just look at the San Antonio model, Pop's the whatever, but at the end of the day, R.C. is working and doing all the stuff," Rivers said. "Then they have a discussion."

But adhering to the sacrifices and discipline that enable such a setup isn't easy. Popovich performed the role of general manager for two-plus seasons before becoming head coach. In some sense, the dual role he claimed in 1996 was a natural merging of his two previous ones. He sits at the fulcrum of that spectrum of opinion about how vital the granular work of the front office is, and that centrism is a major reason why the operation in San Antonio is the NBA's gold standard and why a good fraction of the league's top team executives can trace their lineage back to San Antonio.

The structure and process in Los Angeles are works in progress. A survey of executives and agents reveals that most regard Wohl as the portal into the Clippers, with the understanding that a tight relationship with Rivers means a direct line. Sacks is a familiar entity among his classmates who came up through the scouting ranks. Eastman, who is new to the executive work, wasn't cited as an outgoing call. There's certainly no aversion to Eastman, but he's seen more as counselor or consigliere to Rivers than ambassador or agent and, more than anything, an unknown quantity as an exec as of yet.

"Dave [Wohl] is an information-gatherer, but not a decision-maker," one league power broker said. "Eastman is an unknown, and Gary [Sacks] is good at what he does, but he can't make anything happen."

At the same time, there's also an acknowledgment that earning Rivers' trust is an incremental process. Eastman has been with Rivers on the bench since his first season in Boston. But over time, Rivers upgraded his staff until he had one of the best in the league, and an assistant like Tom Thibodeau is nobody's yes man. If Rivers follows this trajectory in his executive career, we'll see a gradual investment of trust in his most industrious lieutenants with tweaks along the way when he sees opportunities to strengthen the staff. He'll eventually find his front-office Thibodeau, which is encouraging because few see a Buford on his current staff.

Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN (12/9/14)

Doc probably isn't a huge fan like most would want him to be. It's not something that was really focused on when he was a player or even when he began coaching. I don't think he's adverse to it, and I do believe that he'll give things a try if it makes sense to him. He's openly admitted in the past that he didn't really understand the need for some aspects, such as the importance of knowing certain data measured by the SportVU cams (e.g. how fast a player travels on the court). The fact that people have been hired to study things and that there are other individuals that have an active interest in using analytics is an improvement.

The article by Arnovitz isn't really speaking to Doc's view on using advanced analytics, but the breakdown of the roles/powers within the front office. He and other members of the front office have differed on players in the past. He's had final say. If they're proven right enough (and he's proven wrong), I would think that he would lean more heavily on their analysis in the future. The article alludes to him needing to have a greater trust in his staff. Doc is a baby in his current role and I have to hope that he's willing to learn and trust if others have more insight in the decision-making process.

We're at a place where there's a specific window given the current personnel and there's not a ton of room for error.

[Quake Griffin]

In on Doc bashing thread.

[MartinToVaught]

In on Doc bashing thread.

It's not a "Doc bashing thread." If you actually read the excerpt, it specifically mentions that Eastman, Wohl, and Sacks aren't into analytics very much either.

It's a pretty big problem that merits discussion - our competition is simply smarter than us. Other teams in the West are using analytics to find undervalued players in the draft/FA and to help develop players; meanwhile, we've blown through the salary cap and wasted all our assets with our front office's antiquated, old-CBA mindset of filling up the roster with aging veterans and ignoring the value of late first-round picks. It's going to be difficult to catch up when we've handicapped ourselves financially and our opponents are thinking ten steps ahead.

[Ranma]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/billoram/status/570774383397982208[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/MarkG_Medina/status/570778219663589377[/tweet]

[og15]

In on Doc bashing thread.

It's not a "Doc bashing thread." If you actually read the excerpt, it specifically mentions that Eastman, Wohl, and Sacks aren't into analytics very much either.

It's a pretty big problem that merits discussion - our competition is simply smarter than us. Other teams in the West are using analytics to find undervalued players in the draft/FA and to help develop players; meanwhile, we've blown through the salary cap and wasted all our assets with our front office's antiquated, old-CBA mindset of filling up the roster with aging veterans and ignoring the value of late first-round picks. It's going to be difficult to catch up when we've handicapped ourselves financially and our opponents are thinking ten steps ahead.

I wouldn't call it smarter. They are just using all the tools available to them to the best of their abilities, and that's to me what is important. Use all the tools available to you, don't leave any stone unturned, get all the info you can, and whether you change what you're doing or not, you know you've done your homework and you know you've gotten all the info you can and are hopefully making informed decisions.

Some people keep thinking the purpose of analytics is to replace critical thinking and they'll counter with "well analytics don't tell you everything", "analytics can't take into account this or that context". Yea, that's why there humans behind it. Humans fill in the holes, humans take context into account. The purpose is to inform your critical thinking and decision making. To help you see things you might not have noticed, or you might have noticed, but had no real "proof" or "data".

For example things like how you defend the pick and roll, the effectiveness of certain strategies. You should want to see numbers or breakdowns as to how effective you actually are at these things. You might think it is effective, but maybe it isn't. There's definitely positive value in having more info, and people who are resistant to that aren't doing themselves any favors.