Basketball and Data Mining

Basketball and Data Mining

I have to share a couple of articles about basketball that recently circulated.

Hub Fans Bid Kid. . . – a Sports Illustrated article on Brad Stevens, the new coach of the Celtics

Why the NBA is Using Cameras to Track Its Players’ Every Move – a Fast Company article on basketball metrics

It’s fun to watch industries grapple with change. The new emphasis on data gathering in basketball (which has been described as too fluid for mathematics) has journalists pitting the “old guard” against the “geeks” a la Moneyball – The art of winning an unfair game.

I highly recommend an afternoon reading the source materials because the trick in all mind shifts is in the abstraction. Immerse yourself in it and then ask yourself what isn’t changing. That deep knowledge required to evaluate basketball players and manage games isn’t going away. When those old guard masters learn to use the data to verify their assumptions, you’ll see some interesting things. It’s happening in baseball where games are dragging on and on and it will change basketball in the short term.

When does it drift down to high school basektball? IDK. (it’s probably already there)

Good stuff.