Groundbreaker keeps tabs on Warriors
Lori Hoye started in the Golden State Warriors statistics department when Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin — the dynamic trio known as Run TMC — were filling up the stat sheet. Her first season with the team, 1989, was the first year the NBA required computers be used to track stats. In the ’90s, most Warriors games ended in the wrong column of the team stat that matters most: wins and losses.
Now Hoye is doing stats for the NBA’s top-scoring team. Stephen Curry and the Warriors have revolutionized the way basketball is played, but the Warriors revolutionized the way the game is recorded when they hired Hoye.
She is the first woman to be named the Primary Inputter Statistician for an NBA franchise.
She’s the only black woman to ever hold the position.
“She’s the only one that looks like her in the league,” said Hoye’s husband, Walter, who also is on the Warriors’ stats team.
Hoye records every action that happens during a game. That’s every pass, shot, rebound, turnover or assist — on every possession.
“From the time that the ball is tossed until they’ve walked off the court,” she said.
Her first season she used a portable computer that weighed 15 pounds. Now she uses a touchscreen.
“Her skill set, capabilities and calmness in a fast-paced position are terrific qualities that we all admire,” said Raymond Ridder, the Warriors’ vice president of communications. “She has demonstrated the unique ability to adapt to change in a job that has changed immeasurably over the years, from the handwritten box scores of Chris Mullin to the computer-generated stat sheets of Steph Curry.”
If Hoye doesn’t record a play, it doesn’t count — like it never happened. Despite TV and replays, even. It has to come from her official hands.
“No one knows what happened five seconds ago except her,” Walter said as we sat in a dining room at Oracle Arena in Oakland before the Warriors played the Sacramento Kings on March 16. “All the numbers come from her.”
The couple, who live in Union City, wore matching “Got Jesus” caps. In addition to his stats team duties, Walter is one of the team’s two chaplains who hold Bible study before games.
“We don’t deal with the game,” Walter said. “They’ve got enough coaching, and they’re professionals. But they’re still human.”
Recording stats is, of course, about much more than just writing down a bunch of numbers. Statistics tell the intimately detailed tale of how the game is played, how it changes, why it changes and much more.
It’s no easy feat. Most players carry a bag of well-worn tricks to the court, and it takes a sharp eye to catch them all. Especially a player like Curry, who wheels a veritable suitcase of moves and shots when he crosses halfcourt. The quantity, efficiency and frequency of those moves and shots, reflected in stat after stat after stat, illustrate why and how he is the phenomenon he is.
One of the more obvious examples: Before Curry entered the league, teams wouldn’t shoot from 30 feet away from the basket. Now in the data-driven NBA, advanced statistics suggest the three-point shot is more valuable to attempt than a mid-range twopoint shot.
“He has done more than revolutionize (the game),” said Walter, 61, who thinks Curry’s father, Dell Curry, is the better shooter of the two. “The entire league now is almost a replica. You got guys in college playing like him.”
Stats also mean money, and players work the stat sheet as hard as they work the referees. Think about it: What’s one more assist that could lead to one more triple double (double figures in three categories) worth to Draymond Green in contract negotiations? An extra rebound or steal per game could be worth millions to a player.
It’s Hoye who makes the final call.
The Hoyes met while working at Pacific Bell, the phone company now owned by AT&T. She wrote the code for the software running on the mainframe computers he operated. She was in Hayward, he was in San Diego. They would talk on the phone, the calls sometimes starting at 3 a.m. when he had to tell her something needed to be fixed.
They both say Walter’s father is the reason she’s in the NBA. In 1968, his father, also named Walter Hoye, was hired as the assistant director of public relations for the NFL’s San Diego Chargers. He was the first black person to hold a front-office position for an NFL team. He introduced her to the head statistician of the Los Angeles Lakers, who invited her to chart a game in 1988.
“His father is a piece of black history,” Hoye said. So is she. Before her ascension into the big time, Hoye, who grew up in San Jose, began doing stats for her high school’s boys basketball team during the 1974-75 season — which coincidentally was the last season the Warriors won the NBA title before breaking a 40-year drought in 2015. She started because her best friend had a crush on the team’s shooting guard. They were 14 years old.
“We both know our parents aren’t going to be dragging us around to follow the basketball team, so she found out you could keep score and you get to go on the bus with the team,” said Hoye, now 58.
Hoye still carries her clipboard with stat sheets in case the computer system crashes, like it did in overtime of a game between Miami and Denver on March 19.
The stats team, which communicates through headsets, anticipates movements because they’ve called and charted right when and where players unpack their bags of tricks — and that’s a super-quick unpacking on any day.
“A lot of guys have their favorite spots,” Hoye said. “That helps. You know it’s coming.”
When Walter gave me his headset at the Kings game, I couldn’t keep up with the calls — the Warriors make teams play really fast — or the crosstalk, like when gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom walked into the arena. It was like listening to friends playing a multi-player video game.
“Come on, Shaun, that’s your spot,” Hoye said after Shaun Livingston missed a short jumper. The Warriors, who were playing without Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson, lost the game that night.
I asked the Hoyes if they were going to follow the Warriors to the Chase Center in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, which is on track to be ready for opening night 2019. Like a lot of longtime Warriors fans who live in the East Bay, the answer will be decided by one thing: transportation.
“It will depend on how easy it will be to get to the venue,” Hoye said. “Now we roll off of BART and walk across the bridge. If Muni can get you there, that’ll be good. If I have to drive, I’m not going.”