I recently read Moneyball and was fairly impressed by it. Here is what I came away with as the main points to what Billy Beane was trying to do. 1) Find the stats that are relevant to winning games. Most commonly used stats are iheritently flawed. For example most people think batting average is important. But the team with the highest batting average seldomely wins the championship. So what stat does the championship team most commonly have, and then what players offer that charecteristic. 2) Don’t draft potential (high school players in baseball), draft someone with a know volume of work (in baseball that is college players). This is partially effected by his low budget. He can’t waste his limited resources by having a high draft choice turn into a nothing. He can’t buy his way out of that mistake. For example I think Stromile Swift is a bust and hope we buy/get another PF. Billy Beane would never have the luxury to get a second one, due to financial constraints. 3) Once you have an ‘accurate’ rating system (that probably nobody else has or understands) try to acquire undervalued players and try to trade away overvalued players. Billy goes so far as to ‘create’ trade bait by putting mediocre relievers into high save opportunities, thereby increasing their value to people who look for relievers with a high number of saves (a popular stat with many GM’s, but one he has little use for). 4) Things change. Design a team that can hang in there the first half of the season, then try to acquire players at mid season (from teams that fall out of contention and will sell off their high priced talent) and then make your run. Part of this is he is on a super strict budget. He is ok with ‘renting’ a player, rather than building for the future. If you have read the book, I would love to hear your opinions, both on the book itself as well as how the overall concepts relate to the Rockets (especially in light of the Morey hiring and apparent promotion) Lastly, in trying to predict this year’s Rockets draft choice, has anybody found a web site (or other source) that shows these types of stats for college players.
I haven't read the book, but I'm intrigued by the possibility of it translating to professional basketball. Just as there's a "sabermetrics" community in baseball (their statistical principles/methods are used in moneyball, by my understanding), there's an analogous "apbrmetrics" community for professional basketball. You can read about it here. Lots of links in that wikipedia entry for getting further information, as well. I would also suggest you check out Dean Oliver's book, Basketball on Paper. Talks about ways to evaluate teams, players using advanced statistical methods. It's a really interesting read. For some advanced college stats, check out: Stats glossary http://kenpom.com/stats.php Just click on a colelge in the second link, and you can see the individual numbers for the players on the roster. Not sure how useful they would be for moneyball, but gives a better idea of their skillset than the typical stats.
Instinctively, without knowing all the formulas and criteria that he uses, I would think that Moneyball leads us right to Redick and Shelden 1 and 2 or vice versa.
It will be interesting to see how it works in basketball. In baseball and football you have a lot more players that contribute to a winning team, so it is easier to draft/trade based on these principals to improve your team. In basketball, I have always felt that your superstars give you the biggest competitive advantage, since there are only 5 players on the court. A lot of your success depends on the luck of the draft. It may help you determine who are the 'true' superstars, but it still is hard to make a draft/trade for them.
Pythagorean Record is what a team's expected record is based on points scored or allowed. This can be found by PF^14/(PF^14 + PA^14) I don't understand the above. What is PF? Is that the "hypotenuse"?
i thought it was: points for (said team) points against (said team) still same meaning, just different name.
Here's an old article relating to how the Sonics used stats analysis to some success when McMillan was coaching. Mavs are known to heavily use stats in their drafting and games.
