Can basketball be reduced to a formula?
IN recent days, former Milwaukee Bucks guard Eric Bledsoe and ESPN analyst Dick Vitale scoffed at the ever-increasing attention given basketball statistics, analytics and numbers.
‘‘I hate it ...,’’ Bledsoe told NBA.com. ‘‘Somehow it can show that an average player can be better than a superstar player in some aspects, and that don’t mean nothing ... . You’re going to put your best five on the court, analytics or not.’’
Vitale bemoaned the flood of numbers he receives to supposedly help him prepare for telecasts.
‘‘It takes away from the beauty of the game,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s becoming crazy.’’
Now, for a shock: such sentiments do not offend Ken Pomeroy, a modern-day Pythagoras with a website (kenpom.com) that showcases basketball addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
‘‘I can actually sympathise with Eric and Dick on some level,’’ Pomeroy said. ‘‘Sometimes I hear numbers that are used, and I feel like they’re not terribly meaningful. They sound cool. But they don’t really add anything to a broadcast or try to make a point.
‘‘You can definitely overdo it with the numbers, and go to a place that doesn’t make a lot of sense.’’
Pomeroy questioning the attention paid to numbers is like Leonardo di Vinci dismissing Renaissance art.
Yet Pomeroy, who is acknowledged as a top college basketball analyst, finds the growing attention to basketball numbers a bit much. For instance, take plusminus. ‘‘I cringe every time I hear people talk plus-minus,’’ Pomeroy said.
Plus-minus supposedly shows how a player’s performance helps or hurts his team’s chances of winning. But, of course, much depends on what teammates are on the floor with you.
‘‘You put me on the floor with LeBron (James) a few minutes, and my plus-minus is probably going to look pretty good,’’ Pomeroy said. ‘‘That doesn’t mean I’m a good basketball player.’’
Pomeroy said he found greater value in such statistics as offensive and defensive efficiency, percentage of rebounds grabbed and percentage of field goals that are three-pointers.
Former Kentucky All- GETTY IMAGES American Kevin Grevey, who is now a scout for the Los Angeles Lakers, said numerical analysis has its place. Lakers coach Luke Walton meets each morning with the team’s analytics expert, Grevey said. Each week the Lakers’ analytics staff conducts mock drafts based on numbers.
But the Lakers still have scouts like Grevey watching and evaluating college players.
‘‘What I like to see, and what analytics doesn’t tell you, is a guy’s heart,’’ Grevey said. ‘‘His love for the game. His passion to play. His willingness to compete. His I.Q. as a player. Is he a happy player? Is he a good teammate? Is he engaged?’’
Del Harris, a longtime NBA coach, said that analytics are a poor tool for evaluating high school or college players. There are too few games played to get a good sense of a player through numbers, he said. Lexington Herald-Leader