Post by John on Oct 31, 2005 12:25:35 GMT -4
seattlepi.nwsource.com/basketball/205859_sonx30.html
Numbers were what Dean Oliver studied as a kid, memorizing his trading cards.
They were the language he spoke fluently in high school when he scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of his SAT test and went to Cal Tech.
And, at age 35, it's numbers that have brought Oliver to the NBA as the Sonics' statistics consultant, his first full-time crack at a lifelong pursuit.
For years, he has traded his statistical studies to NBA teams for free tickets. He published a book on it last year, "Basketball on Paper." This season, it's a full-time job after he took a 75-percent pay cut from the six-figure salary he earned in environmental engineering last year to study chemistry on the basketball court for Seattle this season.
"I dream about dunking," Oliver said. "I never quite got there, but I enjoy this."
Call him the Sonics' super scientist, who watches most games from two states away, though he was in Seattle over the past two weeks. His Bay Area loft has a television perched on a desk with a video recorder right next to it, his one-man analysis station as Seattle takes its swing at bringing to basketball the stats-centric thinking that's so en vogue in baseball.
It's not a novelty act, and it's not necessarily new. Sonics president Wally Walker has an MBA from Stanford and loves numbers. He oversaw the development of the Sonics' own player-rating software when he was general manager and paid for outside analysis last season. Adding Oliver as a full-time, exclusive consultant this season is just another step in that direction.
Oliver advocates no secret formula, no recipe that he has concocted to rank NBA players Nos. 1 through 300.
Rather, what Oliver studies is efficiency, both on the small scale of a single game and the larger scale of seasons and careers. His measurements are based on points per 100 possessions, his foundation for rating team offense, team defense and individual players.
What types of players are compatible? What types of skills must a team have to be successful? How rare is Ray Allen's smooth-shooting stroke, which helps inform how much he's worth? Which players get less efficient the more they shoot and which ones need more shots to be effective? Is Vladimir Radmanovic a unique mismatch who changes the nature of a game or a shooting specialist?
Oliver isn't the only one eyeballing those questions for Seattle, but he is a new voice in the Sonics chorus. The idea is to get a fresh perspective in a sport ingrained with old-salt scouting embodied by general manager Rick Sund, who believes conclusions on chemistry are best drawn from the gut.
Trying a different tack by using stats can lead to insights. In baseball, it helped the Oakland A's identify the talents and skills that were undervalued and those that were overpriced. It allowed the A's to remain competitive despite a much smaller budget than most major league baseball teams, an approach chronicled in Michael Lewis' book "Moneyball."
It's not so all encompassing in Seattle where Oliver's day-to-day contribution is subtler. After Seattle's 30-point, season-opening loss, Oliver found proof that a first-game blowout didn't always forecast doom. In 1994, Orlando lost its season-opener and played in the NBA Finals the following summer.
This summer, Oliver found other point guards who had rookie seasons similar to Luke Ridnour, who was inconsistent both in performance and playing time. The list wasn't entirely encouraging because it included players like Terrence Stansbury. But Steve Nash was on the list of comparable rookies, though it was Sam Cassell whose first season more closely resembled Ridnour's. The idea was that by identifying similar players, the Sonics could find what ultimately made Cassell successful, and steer Ridnour in that direction while helping him avoid the potholes that sunk Stansbury.
Coach Nate McMillan used Oliver's results the first day of training camp, and while statistics may provide a road map, McMillan's hands were on the Sonics' steering wheel.
"You've got to have a feel," McMillan said, addressing the use of stats this season after one training camp practice. "Those numbers can help you understand what's going on, but during a game you have to have the feel of the game."
That's where basketball differs from baseball, a largely individual sport where teamwork and momentum are talked about more than they are felt.
"In baseball, what are you going to do, not throw the ball to the first baseman because you don't like him?" Sonics assistant Bob Weiss joked before a game last season.
In basketball, no one is alone at home plate, isolated against an opponent again and again like the batter-pitcher matchup. A basketball player's shots vary in degree of difficulty based on his teammates' ability and willingness to set him up with a pass.
Oliver tries to measure those things by focusing on efficiency, both by a team and an individual. How often does a player make good things happen when he touches the ball? How often does he keep bad things from happening on defense? Who gets better the more shots he takes? Who gets worse?
Those are the questions he takes a scientist's approach to answering.
In environmental engineering he studied things such as contaminated drinking water, whether the pollution was sufficient to constitute risk. He sought to determine what might have caused pollution, information that would help steer cleanup in the right direction.
"I was certainly doing a very valuable service," Oliver said. "It's an important part of the economy and keeping the environment safe."
Now, it's basketball he has put under the microscope.
"Even though basketball is a form of trivial entertainment, I still like the kind of science that I'm doing," Oliver said.
Numbers were what Dean Oliver studied as a kid, memorizing his trading cards.
They were the language he spoke fluently in high school when he scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of his SAT test and went to Cal Tech.
And, at age 35, it's numbers that have brought Oliver to the NBA as the Sonics' statistics consultant, his first full-time crack at a lifelong pursuit.
For years, he has traded his statistical studies to NBA teams for free tickets. He published a book on it last year, "Basketball on Paper." This season, it's a full-time job after he took a 75-percent pay cut from the six-figure salary he earned in environmental engineering last year to study chemistry on the basketball court for Seattle this season.
"I dream about dunking," Oliver said. "I never quite got there, but I enjoy this."
Call him the Sonics' super scientist, who watches most games from two states away, though he was in Seattle over the past two weeks. His Bay Area loft has a television perched on a desk with a video recorder right next to it, his one-man analysis station as Seattle takes its swing at bringing to basketball the stats-centric thinking that's so en vogue in baseball.
It's not a novelty act, and it's not necessarily new. Sonics president Wally Walker has an MBA from Stanford and loves numbers. He oversaw the development of the Sonics' own player-rating software when he was general manager and paid for outside analysis last season. Adding Oliver as a full-time, exclusive consultant this season is just another step in that direction.
Oliver advocates no secret formula, no recipe that he has concocted to rank NBA players Nos. 1 through 300.
Rather, what Oliver studies is efficiency, both on the small scale of a single game and the larger scale of seasons and careers. His measurements are based on points per 100 possessions, his foundation for rating team offense, team defense and individual players.
What types of players are compatible? What types of skills must a team have to be successful? How rare is Ray Allen's smooth-shooting stroke, which helps inform how much he's worth? Which players get less efficient the more they shoot and which ones need more shots to be effective? Is Vladimir Radmanovic a unique mismatch who changes the nature of a game or a shooting specialist?
Oliver isn't the only one eyeballing those questions for Seattle, but he is a new voice in the Sonics chorus. The idea is to get a fresh perspective in a sport ingrained with old-salt scouting embodied by general manager Rick Sund, who believes conclusions on chemistry are best drawn from the gut.
Trying a different tack by using stats can lead to insights. In baseball, it helped the Oakland A's identify the talents and skills that were undervalued and those that were overpriced. It allowed the A's to remain competitive despite a much smaller budget than most major league baseball teams, an approach chronicled in Michael Lewis' book "Moneyball."
It's not so all encompassing in Seattle where Oliver's day-to-day contribution is subtler. After Seattle's 30-point, season-opening loss, Oliver found proof that a first-game blowout didn't always forecast doom. In 1994, Orlando lost its season-opener and played in the NBA Finals the following summer.
This summer, Oliver found other point guards who had rookie seasons similar to Luke Ridnour, who was inconsistent both in performance and playing time. The list wasn't entirely encouraging because it included players like Terrence Stansbury. But Steve Nash was on the list of comparable rookies, though it was Sam Cassell whose first season more closely resembled Ridnour's. The idea was that by identifying similar players, the Sonics could find what ultimately made Cassell successful, and steer Ridnour in that direction while helping him avoid the potholes that sunk Stansbury.
Coach Nate McMillan used Oliver's results the first day of training camp, and while statistics may provide a road map, McMillan's hands were on the Sonics' steering wheel.
"You've got to have a feel," McMillan said, addressing the use of stats this season after one training camp practice. "Those numbers can help you understand what's going on, but during a game you have to have the feel of the game."
That's where basketball differs from baseball, a largely individual sport where teamwork and momentum are talked about more than they are felt.
"In baseball, what are you going to do, not throw the ball to the first baseman because you don't like him?" Sonics assistant Bob Weiss joked before a game last season.
In basketball, no one is alone at home plate, isolated against an opponent again and again like the batter-pitcher matchup. A basketball player's shots vary in degree of difficulty based on his teammates' ability and willingness to set him up with a pass.
Oliver tries to measure those things by focusing on efficiency, both by a team and an individual. How often does a player make good things happen when he touches the ball? How often does he keep bad things from happening on defense? Who gets better the more shots he takes? Who gets worse?
Those are the questions he takes a scientist's approach to answering.
In environmental engineering he studied things such as contaminated drinking water, whether the pollution was sufficient to constitute risk. He sought to determine what might have caused pollution, information that would help steer cleanup in the right direction.
"I was certainly doing a very valuable service," Oliver said. "It's an important part of the economy and keeping the environment safe."
Now, it's basketball he has put under the microscope.
"Even though basketball is a form of trivial entertainment, I still like the kind of science that I'm doing," Oliver said.