Lakers only team not attending Sloan conference

[dockingsched]

Kevin Pelton @kpelton

An annual Sloan highlight is counting the represented teams. I count 29, missing only the Lakers. Some of those may be business staff.

Kinda irks me that the lakers seem to always be behind the ball with this. i know that in previous yrs jeanie buss was there for the business side of this conference, and i'm not exactly sure which other teams fail to send people for the basketball side....but as far as i've read since this conference kicked off a few yrs back, the lakers have never sent someone from the basketball operations side.

guess jim buss doesn't want to unleash his self created player evaluation system on the rest of the league...right?

[Slava]

Chaz has other priorities I guess.

[Imadogg]

lol. a sad lol

[Kilroy]

Honestly I'm not sure why we should care about not being there... And judging from the content of the conference, this wouldn't be something Jim Buss should attend... It's like comic-con... The CEO's don't go... Junior level geeks go...

Only interesting article, I saw...

The Dwight Effect: A New Ensemble of Interior Defense Analytics for the NBA
Posted on February 9, 2013 by MIT

Basketball is a dualistic sport: all players compete on both offense and defense, and the core strategies of basketball revolve around scoring points on offense and preventing points on defense. However, conventional basketball statistics emphasize offensive performance much more than defensive performance. In the basketball analytics community, we do not have enough metrics and analytical frameworks to effectively characterize defensive play. However, although measuring defense has traditionally been difficult, new player tracking data are presenting new opportunities to understand defensive basketball. This paper introduces new spatial and visual analytics capable of assessing and characterizing the nature of interior defense in the NBA. We present two case studies that each focus on a different component of defensive play. Our results suggest that the integration of spatial approaches and player tracking data not only promise to improve the status quo of defensive analytics, but also reveal some important challenges associated with evaluating defense.

As a side note, my Daughter's Basketball coach was/is the highest scoring player in MIT women's BBall History.

[Slava]

I don't think that's accurate, Daryl Morey was the chair for last year's session and he's attending again this season. I'd assume the GM/AGM from every team would likely attend or atleast the head of analytical science will.

Morey is the direct head of performance analysis in Houston, I assumed from all reports coming out that Jim Buss had assumed the same role in LA, if not for a direct gain he should atleast go there to scout other teams and may be find a guy that he can hire for us.

Which brings me to a more important question, do we even have an assistant GM since Ronnie Lester was let go?

[Sedale Threatt]

Also, I'm pretty sure RC Buford was scheduled to participate in a panel.

At any rate, the Lakers don't really need to attend as their overseer is so far ahead of the curve he creates his own analytics.

[dockingsched]

Honestly I'm not sure why we should care about not being there... And judging from the content of the conference, this wouldn't be something Jim Buss should attend... It's like comic-con... The CEO's don't go... Junior level geeks go...

i don't really care that jim buss himself doesn't go, but being the only team that doesn't even send a "junior level geek" seems wrong to me. every single team in the nba thinks its worthwhile to at least send one basketball or business representative, except the lakers? hard to justify that imo.

[Kilroy]

Well, judging from who Jim likes to hire, maybe we did send someone and nobody has any idea who they are.

Maybe I over-stated my point... I think it'd be nice to send someone too... I just don't think it's reason to increase the hate of Jim Buss if we didn't.

[Minge]

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Goldsberry_Sloan_Submission.pdf

Case Study: Who is the best shooter in the NBA?

Derived metrics that described spatial aspects of shooting performance throughout the scoring area.

The most basic metric is called “Spread,” which is simply a count of the unique shooting cells in which a player has attempted at least one field goal. The raw result is a number between 0 and 1,284 and summarizes the spatial diversity of a player’s shooting attempts. By dividing the count by 1,284 and multiplying by 100 we generated Spread%, which indicates the percentage of the scoring area in which a player has attempted at least one field goal.

Table 1: Top 10 players in “Spread” metric

Code: Select all

    Player       Spread   Spread%
 1. Kobe Bryant   1,071    83.4%
 2. Lebron James  1,047    81.5%
 3. Vince Carter  1,005    78.3%
 4. Joe Johnson     992    77.3%
 5. Rudy Gay        983    76.6%
 6. Antawn Jamison  965    75.2%
 7. Andre Igudola   962    74.9%
 8. Ray Allen       952    74.1%
 8. Kevin Durant    949    73.9%
10. Danny Granger   948    73.8%


Spread visualizations reveal a player’s basic shooting tendencies, but tell us nothing about potency.

Shooting skill requires more than attempts; the best shooters in the league are able to make baskets at effective rates from many court locations. To describe spatial potency of players we created a metric called “Range,” which is a count of the number of unique shooting cells in which a player averages at least 1 point per attempt (PPA). PPA varies considerably around the court. As anyone who has ever shot a basketball knows, the probability of a shot attempt resulting in a made basket is spatially dependent; some shots are easier than others, and some players are unable to shot effectively from most court locations. Range accounts for spatial influences on shooting effectiveness. This is essentially a count of the number of shooting cells in which a player averages more than 1 PPA; we chose PPA over FG% as it inherently accounts for the differences between 2-point and 3-point field goal attempts.

Table 2: Top 10 players in “Range” metric

Code: Select all

    Player        Range   Range%
 1. Steve Nash     406    31.6%
 2. Ray Allen      386    30.1%
 3. Kobe Bryant    383    29.8%
 4. Dirk Nowitzki  373    29.0%
 5. Rashard Lewis  354    27.6%
 6. Joe Johnson    352    27.4%
 7. Vince Carter   343    26.7%
 8. Paul Pierce    332    25.9%
 8. Rudy Gay       332    25.9%
10. Danny Granger  331    25.8%


[TyCobb]

Baseball talked about advanced statistics before it was cool to.

[Slava]

Baseball is abut the most ideal sport for sabermetrics in the sense that most actions and reactions on the field are defined into a finite space. No wonder every team in baseball has a separate department for player evaluation. The Cardinals have an entire unit with 20 - 30 people including statisticians, applied mathematicians and developers exclusively to develop evaluation methods.

[DEEP3CL]

The Lakers arr about wins. ..wins. ..wins and titles. I don't see how this helps us in any sense. Maybe down the line we can find some rep to go. For now it's other matters more presssing

[LAKESHOW]

We did send somebody. I believe he was tending the bar

[MelosSoreWrist]

The Lakers arr about wins. ..wins. ..wins and titles. I don't see how this helps us in any sense. Maybe down the line we can find some rep to go. For now it's other matters more presssing

okay.

Maybe the Lakers are doing their own thing. But even then, you want to know what others are doing and why and where they are headed and why. It would affect free agents signings, trades, extensions etc.

[Gek]

Honestly I'm not sure why we should care about not being there... And judging from the content of the conference, this wouldn't be something Jim Buss should attend... It's like comic-con... The CEO's don't go... Junior level geeks go...

Only interesting article, I saw...

The Dwight Effect: A New Ensemble of Interior Defense Analytics for the NBA
Posted on February 9, 2013 by MIT

Basketball is a dualistic sport: all players compete on both offense and defense, and the core strategies of basketball revolve around scoring points on offense and preventing points on defense. However, conventional basketball statistics emphasize offensive performance much more than defensive performance. In the basketball analytics community, we do not have enough metrics and analytical frameworks to effectively characterize defensive play. However, although measuring defense has traditionally been difficult, new player tracking data are presenting new opportunities to understand defensive basketball. This paper introduces new spatial and visual analytics capable of assessing and characterizing the nature of interior defense in the NBA. We present two case studies that each focus on a different component of defensive play. Our results suggest that the integration of spatial approaches and player tracking data not only promise to improve the status quo of defensive analytics, but also reveal some important challenges associated with evaluating defense.

As a side note, my Daughter's Basketball coach was/is the highest scoring player in MIT women's BBall History.

I read that whole paper . Jordan Hill is a top 5 WORST defender in the pain in terms of opponents FG%.


http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp ... %20NBA.pdf


The issue currently is that SportsVu system is in under half the arenas. This likely skews the data (for example, Larry Sanders is topping some of the lists, but Milwaukee has the system).

[dockingsched]

"From a Celtics standpoint it's a good thing the Lakers aren't here." -- Celtics Assistant GM Mike Zarren

[DEEP3CL]

The Lakers arr about wins. ..wins. ..wins and titles. I don't see how this helps us in any sense. Maybe down the line we can find some rep to go. For now it's other matters more presssing

okay.

Maybe the Lakers are doing their own thing. But even then, you want to know what others are doing and why and where they are headed and why. It would affect free agents signings, trades, extensions etc.

Yeah I get that, but at the same time the Lakers don't have to be there to attain that type of information. They can get it through other methods if need be.

[milesfides]

This is an embarrassment.

The Lakers' track record of poor management and player evaluation reveal what anybody can see: using money to buy big names.

Draft history is abysmal, they don't value picks because they don't know how to evaluate talent.

The amalgamation of D'Antoni, Nash, Dwight and Gasol amounts to a fantasy basketball team, not a real one. Good thing we held onto Devin Ebanks and Darius Morris and Chris Duhon.

Who needs statistics when you can double the average team salary yet can't crack .500?

It's an embarrassment. We're the Yankees.

That's what we lost when Jerry West left - he internalized all the analytics. Brilliant basketball mind.

Now? The least we could do is pursue analytics to limit idiocy.

$100 million payroll, sub 500 team, not attending the Sloan conference. Yeah, because clearly Jim doesn't need any help, he's got everything under control.

[DEEP3CL]

So is this what basketball has come to.......using projected numbers to evaluate a player ? You just can't do it the old school way and look at a player playing the game and come up with the answer of weather he can play or not ?

I read this report from top to bottom, and when the hypothesis tell me this......

We argue that conventional analytics are unable to adequately reveal key spatial performance variables that
influence competitive outcomes in the NBA. In this paper we have evaluated the potential of spatial analysis and
visual analytics as important new devices for NBA analysis

I know all I need to know about some guys who've probably NEVER picked up a basketball other than at a sporting goods store, telling me this is "how you need to do it" from here on out as it pertains to getting players.

Sorry but I'm not buying all of what I see in that report. Yes the numbers may have some validity to them, but I can care less if the report says Ray Allen is the most effective shooter from " diverse locations". Bottom line the game of basketball is going to be won or lost on a specific set of game scenarios that analytics can't solve. The game is going to be affected by a human being not a figured number. Sorry if some here won't like that but that's the reality of it plain and simple.

And I'm not saying that some of the resources aren't helpful in future evaluations, but that concept is a long way from just blowing out whats been done for years.

[dockingsched]

is there a rule were one has to exclusively use stats or the eyeball test? id' assume using all the numbers, stats, scouting, tools available would be the best way to go.