Michael Lewis wrote the book that influened me the most (Moneyball) regarding statistics, so I put a lot of credibility into what he writes.

There’s plenty of stuff to discuss in this article (and I’d be happy to talk about this stuff all day long) and even though I haven’t finished reading the article yet (it’s pretty long) two things immediatelly jumped out at me.

"Someone created the box score," Morey says, "and he should be shot."

Yup, that’s the first step towards a breakthrough. That reminds me of the same problem in baseball. As Lewis details in Moneyball, the baseball box score was developed in the 1800’s by an Englishman who was familiar with the game of cricket. I found it fascinating that the same stats are being used over one hundred years later, and were developed by a guy who didn’t even understand baseball! If that doesn’t speak to the relative inneffectiveness of the baseball card stats, i don’t know what does.

Back to basketball, I think the idea for the current boxscore in basketball was probably developed by people familiar with the game of baseball, not basketball. Assists are probably a good example, where people get credit for assists, but not for “double assists.” The post player who passes out of the double team did more to create the scoring oppurtunity, then the guy did who received the pass from the power forward and passed it to the shooting guard. Only one of those guys got credit for the assist. Perhaps its time to give a more discriminating look to those statistics as well.

That being said, I’m not a smart enough guy to develop my own stats, I’ve gravitated towards PER, but somebody smarter than me with have to come up with the stats, but realizing the box score may be outdated is a step in the right direction.

When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots.

I thought this was weak. It may be true, but that kind of statement seems sort of misplaced when discussing how Morey uses “advanced statistics” to find inefficiencies in the system. Especially since Lewis states, “There are other things Morey has noticed too, but declines to discuss as there is right now in pro basketball real value to new information, and the Rockets feel they have some.”

While that makes sense, it still gives the same problem we currently have now. If stats are weak, then rely upon what you see. Sounds easy enough. Obvious problem though is that you can’t watch these players enough to get a good feel for their true abilities without falling into a sample size trap. I watch Eric Gordon plenty, but OJ Mayo infrequently. If I don’t use stats to even the playing field, then I’m relying on the 3 games I have seen Mayo versus the season plus I have seen of Gordon.

You also can’t use the, “Battier helps his team win.” If wins and losses were paramount, then we would consider Robert Horry the best player in the past 20 years. Obviously there needs to be something else. Perhaps Morey figured out what that something else is (and more power to him, I wouldn’t announce it to the world either) but I’m still searching for it…