analytics - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Broncos Will Try To Cut Down On In-Game Coaching Stupidity
The Denver Broncos will try something new this year that, should it go well, will have fans in Denver spending a little less time shaking their damn heads at head coach Gary Kubiak. The team’s new Director of Analytics, Mitch Tanney, will have a say when it comes to in-game coaching decisions....
The Rays Hope To Save Their Pitchers With New High-Tech Cameras
Yahoo’s Jeff Passan is reporting that the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that has always been at the forefront of baseball’s analytical revolution, have installed a new high-tech camera system at their home ballpark that they hope will help them save their pitchers from injury....
Phil Jackson Was Wrong, But We Already Knew That
Knicks President Phil Jackson did something last Sunday that we’ve all regrettably done: tweeted something where the snarkiness was only outstripped by the stupidity. ...
"Sports Analytics" Is Bullshit Now
The 9th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference takes place this weekend, and you've likely noticed all the coinciding and ongoing coverage of the analytical side of sports. Some of these stories are illuminating explanations of what's going on at the vanguard of sports analysis; others bitch, ...
Byron Scott Says He Doesn't Believe In Analytics. No Shit.
Lakers head coach Byron Scott, whose coaching philosophy basically boils down to "let's go out there and do dumb and bad things on the basketball court," was asked a few questions yesterday about how he utilizes analytics to try and improve his team. Brace yourself for his shocking answer....
Keith Olbermann Uppercuts Charles Barkley Into An Erupting Volcano
Charles Barkley said some really dumb stuff about basketball analytics on Tuesday night, and so Keith Olbermann dedicated a segment of his show to calling Chuck an idiot many, many times....
Introducing: The Shabazz Assist
Two years ago, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry introduced the Kobe Assist, a new statistic that "proves that missing shots is sometimes just as valuable as making them." Goldsberry's analysis was interesting, but it left out a key component: the dunkpass. You see, Goldsberry examined what percentage o...
Do Nice Players Make Their Teammates Worse?
Dick Allen was known for being an unpleasant teammate who warred with teammates and divided clubhouses. In "The Politics of Glory," Bill James called him "a manipulator of extraordinary skill," and wrote,...
Why Is Making The NBA For Rich Kids? Ask Seth Stephens-Davidowitz Here
It's far easier to make it to the NBA if you're born in a richer part of the country, and to a more stable family. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, whose article in the New York Times was based on data from the US Census data and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be here to chat about it...
Why Lionel Messi Is Even Better Than You Think
One of the key findings of The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong is that soccer, more than any other team sport, is a weak link game: matches are won and lost, and championships and relegation are secured, by the genius and quality of a club's superstars, but even more so b...
“Are You A Nerd?” And Other Questions We Asked Our Fellow Nerds At The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
Last weekend, I went to the sixth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Attendance has gone up every year, and it gets harder and harder to get a feel for who actually goes to this thing: Why were they there? Were they still all sabermetrics geeks? High-powered businessmen? To find out, I di...
Daryl Morey Made By Far The Most Transactions In His Fantasy Football League, But Still Came In Eleventh And Lost To His Wife
Via the Twitter of Daryl Morey—God bless him, he has a sense of humor about the whole thing—comes this scorecard from his season of fantasy football. Daryl Morey is the GM of two teams: the Houston Rockets (a basketball franchise) and the Morey Eels (a fantasy football franchise). One of the jobs, h...