#ssac13

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SSAC13: Predictive Sports Betting

[2girls1ball]

On Defense, Everyone Loses in the NBA?

Posted by Romy

Woj had the inverse reaction to that of the twittersphere following Jordan's soul crushing cram on Brandon Knight: 

For this, he's a punch line now. He's a joke. For everyone celebrating Jordan's fantastic lob dunk over a guard some 8 inches shorter and 80 pounds lighter, they've made Knight an object of ridicule. A widely followed parody account of comedian Kevin Hart tweeted that Jordan had been brought up on "charges of rape & aggravated assault against Brandon Knight," and tombstones declaring Knight dead were popping up on the Internet.

Consider now, that just the opposite matador approach to defense was publicly shamed -- and deservedly so -- in an auditorium full of nodding stats rats and front office executives alike at the MIT conference last weekend. Presenting: David Lee's Interior Defense, "aka" the Golden Gate. 

Unfortunately for the current and future state of the NBA, the talk wasn't picked up by some of the biggest networks in the world, and I doubt it was trending on twitter. It's going to take years before the nascent Kirk Goldsberry Ripple Effect starts leaking out of the classroom (and the occasional front office) and eventually makes its way to the courts and high school gyms with more than a faint whisper. As Woj sagely said: 

The message is clear to players everywhere, on every level: Run away. Hide. Don't try to take the charge. Don't try to disrupt the play. There's no reward. This is how backward the basketball culture has become, how twisted the value system.

Welcome to the NBA, where the price of getting out of the camera's burning frame is better than putting your body on the line, no matter how physically outmatched and brave the mere act may be. While I don't think it's healthy to get too overly moralistic too often about these matters, the subsequent flood of "Knight didn't even make the right defensive plaaa-aaay" decoy whine-arguments are worth the rebuttals alone. 

[theumpires]

Is the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference too smug?

Andrew Sharp entered this conference a skeptic and left a skeptic. Why? To explain, Sharp revisits his experience at the conference and explains why it felts more like Daryl Morey's "victory lap" than anything else. A good starting point is this quote:

If there's genius on display at Sloan, it's this: When scouts or coaches or old school GMs get something wrong, it's an example of traditional scouting methods failing. When analytics get something wrong, it's "randomness" that you can't control. A small part of a much bigger process, and teams and fans should trust that process until they get a better outcome. Any skeptics must be simple-minded conservative talk radio reactionaries, eating giant chocolate chip cookies.

[ruheeeee]

The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

I said Sloan. If I Could Change Your Mind Statistics vs. traditionalists: will it ever end? 120 Metres Analyzing the impact of playing field size on the game. I Am The (Clubhouse) Cancer Measuring the value and impact of intangibles. Take the Bench For struggling players, how many chances is too many? Seems So Heavy The latest developments in detecting PEDs. Down in the Basement Bloggers, start your engines! Tell Me Something I Don't Know Searching for new ways to play with old data. All Used Up Comparing the aging curve across different sports. Follow the Leader Or, why does Michael Young still have a job? At the Edge of the Scene How much impact can fringe players--fourth liners, bench outfielders--have in the playoffs? Green Gardens, Cold Montreal Is Jeffrey Loria here to stay? Whatever, I tried. With sincerest apologies to Sloan Sports Analytics Conference & Sloan Music.

[theumpires]

to record podcasts and shoot short videos. I'm still amazed that ESPN doesn't do a better job broadcasting this content on ESPN2 or ESPNU or ESPN the Ocho. If you are pressed for time, make sure to watch the following:

Philip Maymin on acceleration as the most important skill in the NBA

Ben Alamar, former Thunder stats guy, who explains how stats convinced the Thunder to draft Westbrook over Brook Lopez

Vasu Kulkarni's company Krossover's new game called sIQ that tests your ability to evaluate film

[halfcourttrap-blog]

Takeaways From The MIT SLOAN SPORTS ANALYTICS CONFERENCE

This year was the first year I attended the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and judging by how the conference grew to over 2,700 attendees I was not the only rookie at the Boston Convention and Events Center this weekend. Now in its 7th year the Sloan Conference has grown from a small conference focusing primarily on breaking down the sabermetics of baseball into one of the biggest events in the sports industry. This year's conference had something for everyone who is interested in statistics or the business of sport. From the Algorithmic Taxonomy of Basketball Plays from Optical Data to how teams utilize twitter to engage with fans there were panels that spaned the great divide that is sports today.

Overall the thing that separates the Sloan Conference from all other sports conferences is the scope of people that attend. There are few places where GMs from over 40 professional sports are talking to students, bloggers, and fans. I personally spent time talking with Atlanta Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff, Spurs GM R.C. Buford, and countless others. From a 2 hour conversation at the hotel bar about how the UFC struggles with quantifying their statistics to a conversation about how Austrailian Rugby has morality clauses in all their contracts that are leaps and bounds more stringent than American sports I took away a better understanding of all aspects of the sports industry and everyone else that attended would probably say the same. The conference organizing comittee made up primarily of MIT business students with help of Jessica Gelman VP Customer Marketing & Strategy, Kraft Sports Group and Houston Rockets GM Darrell Morey did a great job of putting on a conference that had no real missteps. The use of Twitter to handle most of the audience Q&As and the Twitter wall that displayed the thoughts of attendees in the main ball room made brought everyone together both in the BCEC and in the world of social networking.

Personally my favorite panel of the weekend was the It's Not You It's Me: Break Ups in Sports session with Stan Van Gundy, former Colts GM Bill Polian, and Former Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke who fits in at the Sloan Conference about as well as a Canadian Mountie would fit in at Club Med in the Bahamas. Burke who hockey fans know is one of the most open and honest voices in the game had the quote of the weekend when he said "Statistics are like a lampost for a drunk; it's useful for support but not illumination."

The Sloan Conference is 2 days of sports dorkery at it's finest. It is the only place where Nate Silver of the New York Times and the Five Thirty Eight blog is treated like a combination of Paul McCartney and the Pope. Bill Simmons dubbed it "Dorkapalooza" but it has grown into something more as sports business becomes a bigger part of the weekend and as more casual fans attend. Next year's conference will likely have more than 3,000 attendees and I know for sure I will be back. 

I will have more of my thoughts from the Sloan Conference throughout this week.

[theumpires]

Dorkapalooza 2013, Day One: Recapping the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

Over 2,700 sports executives, analysts, journalists, and enthusiasts are gathered in Boston this weekend to attend the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC). The Sloan Sports conference began in 2006 when MIT students sought to organize a formal discussion about the role of analytics in sports. In 2009, ESPN's Bill Simmons was a guest speaker and he nicknamed the conference Dorkapalooza. MIT graduate students continue to run the conference today. Now a widely-anticipated annual event with ESPN and SAP as corporate sponsors, the 6th SSAC features some of the brightest, forward-thinking minds in sports, including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, MLBAM President and CEO Bob Bowman, Moneyball author Michael Lewis, The New York Times’ Nate Silver, San Francisco 49ers COO Parag Marathe, San Antonio Spurs GM R.C. Buford, and more. We’ve watched panels throughout Day One. Here are some early observations:

Measure skills, not outcomes. Video technology is unlocking the next frontier for understanding performance, especially in the NBA and MLB. Instead of focusing on how many times a player gets on base or shoots a corner three pointer, teams are now focusing on the body motions that increase the percentages of hits or shots. Aspiring sabermatricians should study physiology in addition to statistics.

Outcomes get you fired. When the season is over, the coach or GM’s job hinges on a team’s win and projected growth. Owners, fans, and writers don’t want to hear about what the stats say. They want rings and parades. As long as good outcomes can be built on bad processes to let coaches or GMs keep their job, change will be slow.

The NFL has a long way to go. Of the big three sports - MLB, NBA and the NFL - the NFL lags in adopting advanced metrics. The primary culprits are culture, degree of difficulty, and history. The NFL values people who don’t come across as smart. Scott Pioli said, “football seems to have more testosterone than other sports.” Most teams still don’t employ “math guys” and instead turn to poorly paid former college players who are now Quality Control Coaches. Over the next few years, expect the NFL to increasingly invest in better ways to understand injuries and preventing injuries.

Study persuasion. Statistics by themselves won’t sway decision makers. The most talented front office professionals are also skilled communicators who can persuade general managers, coaches and owners about the value of these new statistics. Parag Marathe would rather hire someone who is right 30% of the time and can communicate clearly over someone who is right 100% of the time and can’t persuade his own mother.

Convince your owner to ignore the media. Former Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke describes the internet as “sports talk radio on steroids with lower IQ.” It is imprudent to make decisions off of blog posts, but general managers and coaches feel the pressure if their boss (the owner) gets caught up in the day to day media churn. The most successful teams are usually owned by people with thick skin.

Sophisticated medical staffs. The Dallas Mavericks sign their team doctors to longer contracts than their assistant coaches. There is a large demand for high caliber sports physicians and psychologists. These medical professionals are tasked with more than injury management. They are now involved in cutting edge research, such as genetic testing to optimize a player’s minutes during the regular season.

Networking isn’t going away. If you want a job in sports, who you know still matters more than what you know. SSAC started with a panel titled Revenge of the Nerds, but being smart isn’t enough. If you want a front office job, network, study, network, write, network and then network some more. It doesn’t hurt if your freshman roommate was a scholarship football player.

The 10 year rule. Bill Walsh told Bill Polian that you should quit your front office job after 10 years. To truly build a contender, you will make a lot of enemies and by 10 years, you are no longer effective.

NFL executives really don’t like the Combine. There was nothing positive said about the combine, only statements about how teams are trying to hack the tests by predicting times before athletes run; identifying different submetrics like breakway speed; and bringing in new tests. The Combine seems to have become a ratings play for NFL Network rather than a legitimate testing group for draftees.

Bonus fun facts from the more relaxed panelists.

The NFL bans calculators. The most absurd fact of the day came from Parag Marathe: the NFL has “an anti-technology rule” that bans any electronic device -- iPads, laptops, calculators -- from coaches. So the offensive coordinator in the booth is using pen and paper to calculate in-game stats and the Quality Control coach is analyzing the game by citing the success percentage of plays by using arithmetic.

Mark Cuban, Sitcom Star? Michael Lewis wrote a television pilot about Wall Street that featured Mark Cuban. Lewis cited Cuban’s financial knowledge and dancing moves as motivating attributes when writing Cuban’s character.

Nate Silver is behind the baseball curve. Silver made his bones by designing advanced baseball statistics, yet when asked about the current level of sophistication in sabermetrics, Silver responded that the kids these days “are light years ahead of where I was.”

Tony Romo is the most underrated quarterback in the NFL. When asked to name the most overrated and underrated player in the NFL, a panel of NFL executives expectedly balked and passed on answering. Luckily, Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz was on the panel as well. Schatz declared DeAngelo Hall the most overrated player in the NFL, and said that observers often unfairly punish a player for his transgressions on nationally televised games. So, he cited Tony Romo and Tampa Bay’s Lavonte David as the two most underrated players in football.

Erik Spoelstra: NBA innovator. In 1990, Erik Spoelstra was an assistant video/statistics coach for the New York Knicks. He used to hand slips of paper to Pat Riley with what we now know as advanced NBA statistics, including hustle plays, 50/50 balls, and contested shots.

[theumpires]

Fans are losing out as teams silo away the best advanced metrics minds. Jason Schwartz with a nice preview of #SSAC13