Analytics and the Kings

King Baller

King Baller

All-Star
I want to start this thread to discover what Kings Fans know about the use of Analytics in Basketball. I know very little about it. I saw the movie Money Ball and listened to Vivek Ranadive when he spoke of it as the teams "Secret Sauce". Please share what you know about this subject.

Quote from Vivek along with link to article below:

“We’re going to view this as part of our secret sauce,” Ranadivé said last week at Sleep Train Arena. “So I don’t know that we’re going to share too much about it in the future.” - See more at: http://cowbellkingdom.com/2013/06/2...or-the-sacramento-kings/#sthash.dAfrUdWj.dpuf



KB
 
in my opinion, analytics, like all statistical data, should be used as a component of a much larger evaluative process. these so-called "advanced stats," while useful, mostly tell a smart basketball mind what it already knows. ya don't need a big, fancy sabermetrics model to know that rudy gay is an overrated and inefficient scorer, and that he isn't worth his max contract. in fact, i can't imagine that there are very many gm's left in the nba who still believe that PPG is the be-all-and-end-all of statistical analysis. the allen iverson era is dead and gone. he never won a title, and just about anybody could tell you why without the use of analytics...

i find analytics to be useful at the nba level in filling out a roster with inexpensive and efficient players, much like the a's front office did in the moneyball film. but in truth, the "moneyball" approach has only yielded sustained success in baseball, a very different team sport than, say, basketball or football. whereas the a's constructed a winning roster primarily with spare parts, you're not going to be able to build a winning roster in the nba by cutting cost at every corner. you have to fork over huge sums of money for superstar or all-star talent, and you have to do your best not to overpay overrated talent or roleplayers (*cough* carl landry *cough*). there's only five guys on the court at a time in basketball. it's a sport where a bonafide superstar can make all the difference. and again, you don't need analytics to understand why lebron james is the best individual talent in the nba...
 
From a google search ---> Quote from Basketball Analytics guy Vasu Kulkarni: “These data guys are going to lose their jobs if they can’t figure out a brand new way of looking at the game,” he said. “And so the fact that they’re being brought in, at such high positions, and they’re being paid a lot of money, I mean GMs make millions of dollars, it means in my opinion that they’re going to have to look at the game in a very very different way, and come up with something new and novel that gives them a reason to be around in a position of power.”

Link ---> http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/06/07/guaranteeing-a-win-a-basketball-analytics-perspective/
 
There's so much that we don't know when it comes to the new analytics of Vivek. At this point, it's a "black box." Theoretically, any action in nature, much less on a basketball court, should be able to be described mathematically. Theoretically. Take a video of a basketball game, download it into the computer, and voila! - every single "action" could theoretically be transcribed into mathematical form. And then, by analyzing the voluminous mathematical data, probabilities of "success" could be assigned to to all those actions. Of course, it gets much more complicated when one "action" is involved with several other "actions". And the art" of it all is probably figuring out what "actions" will be deemed significant and what actions will be deemed trivial. Theoretically, this analysis could be done real-time, so a coach on the sideline could make a decision on substitution or on the offense/defense he wants to play based on an algorithm in his PDA. This mathematical method could determine once and for all how much "value" a player has when he plays with any set of four other players you could come up with (on your team or other teams).

My guess is that as time goes by the Kings specific personnel decisions will be influenced much more by advanced analystics than they are today. They just haven't had the time to build the huge database that is necessary for advanced work. However, when it comes to general ideas of how to build a team my guess is that a lot of that work was borrowed from the analytics Vivek was involved with at Golden State. It's a fascinating subject, but we're only going to learn about the inside dope after some years in which little bits and pieces are leaked or dribble out. One of these days, though, we're going to see Malone (or one of his successors) in a game situation looking at his analytics PDA on the sideline in order to make a decision on a substitution or what type of defense or offense to play. It's just a question of time.
 
I hate to use Wikipedia as a source, but it's right on when it says that analytics is about finding meaningful patterns in data. A simple example of a piece of data (or statistic) is a player's PPG. Obviously what PPG tells us is how many points per game Player A averaged in a given timeframe. But that certainly doesn't tell us how that player will do against Mbah a Moute (or some other elite defender). Eventually we could build a dataset that would help us understand how to get the most from the talent we have, both individually and collectively. But the quality of the patterns we identify are dependent on the data being reliable and correctly interpreted. Analytics requires layers of data and assumptions, data and assumptions. If we get it right, knowing the patterns will be an advantage. If we get it wrong, the patterns will be a disadvantage. Time will tell if analytics will be part of the King's recipe for success.
 
I imagine "data analytics" played a role in bringing in Landry. It's a good addition to have, but it's not everything. Look at John Hollinger as a guy that has all these stats as to who the best players are, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The problem is these guys get so wrapped up in "the formula" that they stick to it even when it's clearly failing. You can change a direction if something is failing when you aren't building your team around a specific formula that you're positive will work if you just stick with it.
 
For the past couple of years I've signed up ( around $30 an NBA season) for the Synergy Sports Tech service for the NBA. In particular the statistics of every shot every player makes and the circumstances around that shot: spot up, driving, pick-n-role, etc; who was guarding him, etc, etc. From that set of stats as one gets into the 3rd month of the season, you get to see player habits in all situations, when they go left or right, what % shooting they have in a 100 different scenarios. For the number geeks and stat freaks (I'm afraid I'm a bit of that but not consistently) its a treasure trove of situational stats for players. They tend not even to put up stat paks until the 2nd month of the season. Which makes sense as everyone has to establish the styles, except of course the Spurs who do the same thing year in and year out and drive everyone nuts.


http://www.synergysportstech.com/products.html
 
SacKings384 said:
I imagine "data analytics" played a role in bringing in Landry. It's a good addition to have, but it's not everything. Look at John Hollinger as a guy that has all these stats as to who the best players are, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The problem is these guys get so wrapped up in "the formula" that they stick to it even when it's clearly failing. You can change a direction if something is failing when you aren't building your team around a specific formula that you're positive will work if you just stick with it.
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absolutely. Most advanced stats love Landry because of his ridiculously good efficiency on a low # of shot attempts. Contrary to popular belief around here, players who can do that are valuable to NBA teams.

Advanced stats should be used as a considerable tool to evaluate NBA talent as it is impossible to see every minute from every NBA player. Even then, stats pick up everything you do miss and do not lie to you (like your eyes do) if you know the proper context for each individual statistic. And if people would be willing to spend a little time understanding hw the numbers work, it will lead to a much better understanding to what we see on the basketball court. Just simple stuff like AST%, TS%, eFG%, TRB% provide a much better understanding of that player's talents. Traditional stats like PPG, FG%, RPG, APG all have their uses, but why purposefully limit your knowledge of a player? There's so much cool stuff out there thats tested and proven to show value.
 
The_Jamal said:
absolutely. Most advanced stats love Landry because of his ridiculously good efficiency on a low # of shot attempts. Contrary to popular belief around here, players who can do that are valuable to NBA teams.

Advanced stats should be used as a considerable tool to evaluate NBA talent as it is impossible to see every minute from every NBA player. Even then, stats pick up everything you do miss and do not lie to you (like your eyes do) if you know the proper context for each individual statistic. And if people would be willing to spend a little time understanding hw the numbers work, it will lead to a much better understanding to what we see on the basketball court. Just simple stuff like AST%, TS%, eFG%, TRB% provide a much better understanding of that player's talents. Traditional stats like PPG, FG%, RPG, APG all have their uses, but why purposefully limit your knowledge of a player? There's so much cool stuff out there thats tested and proven to show value.
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The problem is you have to use those stats in the context of what else that player brings to the table along with what a team needs.

I haven't seen a single fan on here claim that Carl isn't an efficient scorer or that efficient scoring isn't a useful skill. The problem is that the things he doesn't do well are far greater needs for the team and outweigh the one thing he does do at a high level. It's why stats (advanced and otherwise) are only one part of the bigger strategic team building process.
 
sdballer said:
The problem is you have to use those stats in the context of what else that player brings to the table along with what a team needs.

I haven't seen a single fan on here claim that Carl isn't an efficient scorer or that efficient scoring isn't a useful skill. The problem is that the things he doesn't do well are far greater needs for the team and outweigh the one thing he does do at a high level. It's why stats (advanced and otherwise) are only one part of the bigger strategic team building process.
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I agree. Everything requires context. And like baseball, basketball defensive statistics are FAR behind the curve as to being valuable. There isn't much out there statistically that can accurately tell you who's a great defender or not.

My point is advanced numbers should not be something we run away from. They improve our understanding of the game. They tell us that even we watch Brandon Jennings score 40 on 24 shots on the game we happen to watch, that we don't ignore his next 4 games of shooting sub 40% that we don't see.

Like everyone else, I'm not disputing that Landry makes 0 sense right now. But I also don't feel he's the scrub that many have made him out to be calling him a midget chucker etc. He's an incredibly valuable role player and can help us win games in the right situation.
 
Basketball is so much more than putting guys together that score well on the analytics. The Lakers are proof of that. If there is a sport where chemistry means the most, it's definitely basketball.
 
The_Jamal said:
I agree. Everything requires context. And like baseball, basketball defensive statistics are FAR behind the curve as to being valuable. There isn't much out there statistically that can accurately tell you who's a great defender or not.

My point is advanced numbers should not be something we run away from. They improve our understanding of the game. They tell us that even we watch Brandon Jennings score 40 on 24 shots on the game we happen to watch, that we don't ignore his next 4 games of shooting sub 40% that we don't see.

Like everyone else, I'm not disputing that Landry makes 0 sense right now. But I also don't feel he's the scrub that many have made him out to be calling him a midget chucker etc. He's an incredibly valuable role player and can help us win games in the right situation.
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No argument with any of this.
 
The_Jamal said:
I agree. Everything requires context. And like baseball, basketball defensive statistics are FAR behind the curve as to being valuable. There isn't much out there statistically that can accurately tell you who's a great defender or not.

My point is advanced numbers should not be something we run away from. They improve our understanding of the game. They tell us that even we watch Brandon Jennings score 40 on 24 shots on the game we happen to watch, that we don't ignore his next 4 games of shooting sub 40% that we don't see.

Like everyone else, I'm not disputing that Landry makes 0 sense right now. But I also don't feel he's the scrub that many have made him out to be calling him a midget chucker etc. He's an incredibly valuable role player and can help us win games in the right situation.
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while i agree with most of your post, i dispute that "he's an incredibly valuable role player." carl landry has utility as an undersized scorer off the bench, but even analytics aren't going to make the case that a team should value him at his current cost and length of contract, especially when there was no bidding war for his services, and especially when the kings require more defensively-oriented skillsets from their acquisitions. nothing in professional sports occurs within a vacuum. just because landry's not a "scrub" doesn't mean his services are worth the contract he received from this particular team with its particular deficiencies...
 
When it's a struggle to win 30 games, there's lots of problems. Even though the team was 10th or so in scoring, I'm sure it wasn't very efficient. Add Landry who is an efficient scorer. He becomes our best interior scorer. Last year his reb rate per 48 was better than Jason Thompson, not by much, and a lot more than PPat.

As far as the contract, it's hardly outlandish. These teams were reportedly in talks: LA Clippers (strong talks but all they could afford was MLE of 5.1), Indiana Pacers, Portland, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. I don't know about bidding war but he was being pursued and by a couple of good teams.

At this point, I'm seeing JT play backup C and PF, we might be seeing some PPat at SF in stretches with slower bigger SF and us playing a zone. PPat paired with Cuz at the bigs makes some sense offensively. It's just going to take longer than 2 months to cleanup this mess.
 
dude12 said:
When it's a struggle to win 30 games, there's lots of problems. Even though the team was 10th or so in scoring, I'm sure it wasn't very efficient. Add Landry who is an efficient scorer. He becomes our best interior scorer. Last year his reb rate per 48 was better than Jason Thompson, not by much, and a lot more than PPat...
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What about the rest of his career? How does his rebound rate compare to Thompson on that? And, if Landry is our best interior scorer in 2013-14... :eek:


 
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dude12 said:
When it's a struggle to win 30 games, there's lots of problems. Even though the team was 10th or so in scoring, I'm sure it wasn't very efficient. Add Landry who is an efficient scorer. He becomes our best interior scorer. Last year his reb rate per 48 was better than Jason Thompson, not by much, and a lot more than PPat.

As far as the contract, it's hardly outlandish. These teams were reportedly in talks: LA Clippers (strong talks but all they could afford was MLE of 5.1), Indiana Pacers, Portland, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. I don't know about bidding war but he was being pursued and by a couple of good teams.

At this point, I'm seeing JT play backup C and PF, we might be seeing some PPat at SF in stretches with slower bigger SF and us playing a zone. PPat paired with Cuz at the bigs makes some sense offensively. It's just going to take longer than 2 months to cleanup this mess.
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I came up with the one guy who would have been a worse signing. Monta Ellis. Thank god that didn't work out.

Yes, Landry is an efficient scorer. But he does nothing else. Doesn't pass, doesn't play D, blocks a shot once every two games. They can't possibly start him opposite Cousins. It would be a disaster. He fits the team horribly. We don't even need scoring. We don't need what he brings, and certainly not for 4 years at that price.
 
Chubbs said:
I came up with the one guy who would have been a worse signing. Monta Ellis. Thank god that didn't work out.

Yes, Landry is an efficient scorer. But he does nothing else. Doesn't pass, doesn't play D, blocks a shot once every two games. They can't possibly start him opposite Cousins. It would be a disaster. He fits the team horribly. We don't even need scoring. We don't need what he brings, and certainly not for 4 years at that price.
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Nevermind that we already had him. And won 22 games if I"m not mistaken.
 
Chubbs said:
I came up with the one guy who would have been a worse signing. Monta Ellis. Thank god that didn't work out.

Yes, Landry is an efficient scorer. But he does nothing else. Doesn't pass, doesn't play D, blocks a shot once every two games. They can't possibly start him opposite Cousins. It would be a disaster. He fits the team horribly. We don't even need scoring. We don't need what he brings, and certainly not for 4 years at that price.
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So tell me why the Clippers and Pacers would go after him....and the Clippers went hard after him? We added talent to our team. This is where the building stage of the Kings are at present. Like I said, it takes more than 2 months. If the right deal comes up, we now have a piece to deal in Patterson or Thompson that would actually get us something of value. What is so hard to figure out that we need to acquire more talent? Maybe we could have just traded Jimmer or Hayes for a SF.....oh wait, they have no value.
 
dude12 said:
So tell me why the Clippers and Pacers would go after him....and the Clippers went hard after him? We added talent to our team. This is where the building stage of the Kings are at present. Like I said, it takes more than 2 months. If the right deal comes up, we now have a piece to deal in Patterson or Thompson that would actually get us something of value. What is so hard to figure out that we need to acquire more talent? Maybe we could have just traded Jimmer or Hayes for a SF.....oh wait, they have no value.
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Your response doesn't counter the point Chubbs made.
 
Darth Divac said:
Your response doesn't counter the point Chubbs made.
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Chubbs gave an opinion. Obviously Dude12 doesn't agree with that opinion. I would agree that if the Kings intend to start Landry next to Cousins, then I don't think he's a good fit. I think the word disaster is a bit extreme though. But if its their intent to bring him off the bench, then I don't see the problem. Actually I could make a case for signing Aldrich to bring off the bench with Landry as a rim protector. Chubbs said we don't need scoring. Well, we did score a lot of points last season, but we wern't very efficient doing it. And for the most part, our bench was the least efficient at scoring. When Patterson arrived, he helped the scoring off the bench.

When coming off the bench, Landry is a very good role player. I think a lot of people wanted the Kings to sign a big time shotblocker, and instead they signed Landry. Well one is not the other. If you look at Landry as the replacement for a shotblocker, then your disappointed. But if you forget about the shotblocker, and just look at Landry as a role player off the bench, then he doesn't seem that bad an acquisition. Now if you want to argue that we paid too much for him, then I can see that as a valid argument.
 
Darth Divac said:
Your response doesn't counter the point Chubbs made.
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Well.....what bajaden said. But if you meant Chubbs point of saying that it was the second worst signing of free-agency, I think that is a little out there. Did Landry fill a hole? No. But I also am not expecting everything to get accomplished in the first off-season. I think Landry can help this team and has proven to be a very good guy coming off the bench. As far as Landry being 1 dimensional, he does that fairly well. As I said before, it makes our talent base a little deeper for when we are able to make a move to balance out the roster. Landry is good enough to warrant attention from the Clippers and Pacers. If the team feels like it has to move him down the road, that contract is hardly immovable for a proven commodity.
 
We had this Landry discussion in another thread. Here is my cut and pasted response in that other thread;):


Fortunately I believe that will be Landry's role. To come off the bench and provide scoring when Demarcus is on the bench.

Here is a quote from coach Malone:

“He has great toughness, he’s a guy who’s always been one of the better off-the-bench scorers in the post – a true low-post scoring threat, a guy who gets to the foul line and a very good rebounder. The knock on Carl for a while used to be his defense, but being around him last year, he’s very coachable, he has a great attitude and his attention to his defense really got better last year. I would expect it to be even better this coming year.”

Got it here --> http://thekingsblog.com/2013/07/kings-qa-coach-malone/
 
dude12 said:
Well.....what bajaden said. But if you meant Chubbs point of saying that it was the second worst signing of free-agency, I think that is a little out there. Did Landry fill a hole? No. But I also am not expecting everything to get accomplished in the first off-season. I think Landry can help this team and has proven to be a very good guy coming off the bench. As far as Landry being 1 dimensional, he does that fairly well. As I said before, it makes our talent base a little deeper for when we are able to make a move to balance out the roster. Landry is good enough to warrant attention from the Clippers and Pacers. If the team feels like it has to move him down the road, that contract is hardly immovable for a proven commodity.
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That's not what I said. I said the only player worse for the kings would have been monta Ellis. Josh smith, for us, would have made more sense. Cause he fills a need. Landry does not. Is he better than what he had off the bench? Yes. Does it make us a better team. Yes, but not be nearly enough to justify the cost. If it was a 1-2 year deal for 10 million, it'd be a great signing. 4 years 27 million is huge mistake that will hamper us next season, when we might actually be able to get one of the many free agents, plus add another lottery pick. Instead we are taking the marginal improvement that Landry might bring, while tying up money long term, while hurting our lottery chances in the immediate future. And certainly doing nothing to help the teams biggest weakness, defense, where Landry is a strong negative. And passing, where he is one of the worst in the league.

Do people have Landry deja vu? We've been here it before. It didn't work.

That Malone quote I find a little scary in regards to his defense, and Landry in general. Landrys is 29, and he's "very coach able?" Shouldn't he kinda know what he's doing at this point? And for the money we are throwing at him! I don't like hearing that a 29 year got better on defense last year, in his contract year. It just blows me away that we hire a defense first coach, then go out and get Carl Landry. And toss away tyreke. Some,how we got worse defensively.

Btw, if laundry is coming off the bench to spell cousins, then he'll play maybe 15-20 mins a game. I don't think we signed him to barely play him. He's getting 26-30 a night, and many with cousins. It's unavoidable. And Landry adds nothing to cousins game. It's just an awful pairing. JT fits way better.
 
King Baller said:
Manu Ginobilli the litmus test for the Sixth Man role played 23.2 MPG for the Spurs last year. Cousins averaged 30.5 minutes a game last year

Got it here ---> http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/272/manu-ginobili
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Not sure a 35 year old, injury prone guy playing for a coach most known for resting his old stars is the current litmus test for 6th man minutes. The 6th Man winner for the last 8 years all averaged over 30 minutes.
 
sdballer said:
Not sure a 35 year old, injury prone guy playing for a coach most known for resting his old stars is the current litmus test for 6th man minutes. The 6th Man winner for the last 8 years all averaged over 30 minutes.
Click to expand...

Cool thing about it is we will get to see in November:) Manu is the highest paid sixth man. He gets more $$$ than even Tyreke.
 
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