A couple things, one it was a one-game sample. Dirk often makes people look silly and even David Lee does on occasion. Two, this isn't about one-on-one defense and it's certainly not about perimeter defense. Last year, Jordan saved a position-adjusted 0.25 ppg at the rim. This year, he's saving 1.13 ppg at the rim. That's a huge difference over the course of a season. It's no Gobert or Whiteside, but it's pretty good. When you combine that with his rebounding (2nd-chance points are killers), he's really helping the Clippers defensively when he wasn't in the past. Three, I just alluded to this, but my frame of reference is last year. Perhaps ESPN's RPM is picking up someone else's work, but I think Jordan is at least being used better defensively.

Btw, I initially saw this observation not from a stat guy, but an observer. The stat guys confirmed, but others expressed skepticism.

Number of team representatives at the Sloan Sports Conference:

The Celtics are a pretty big analytics team. They were ranked high on this list and it's probably grown since then. The Kings weren't very good. They're probably doubling down now because they're kind of desperate. Houston and Philly are obvious for Sloan. Spurs and Warriors are long-time believers too. Tweets from the event say every single presenter made a Warriors reference. The big shift is the Bulls, who were skeptics previously.

Btw, if you click that link and see the Phillies, former GM Ruben Amaro Jr. recently said that the Phillies reputation for not using analytics was designed to give them a competitive edge by providing false information to other teams. I think it's safe to say that's bull, right? Even if it is true, it certainly didn't help him since his team was built with an inherited core and got worse every year (they should have won his first year to repeat, but other than that).

For Batman:

Portland's PISS-inducing defense and good offensive spacing.

Lol I actually recently acquired that guy's book and saw that article on his website. PISS-inducing.

I'd never heard of him before. I was looking for Layne Vashro's draft projections, but I can't find them.

just saw this. worth pointing out for the people who don't know about MIT, that it is located in Boston. so while yes the Celtics are an analytics team, they also have the benefit of anyone in their organization simply driving to the conference. i think its honestly more impressive that the Pacers and Kings have that many people there.

Impact of age on drafting stars.

Takeaways:

* The younger a player is, the more likely he is to develop skills. It's not as extreme as baseball, but it's still there.
* There are on average 0.9 MVP-quality stars per draft, 2.2 second-tier stars per draft, and 4.4 supporting stars per draft
* When considering between two players who seem to be about even, the younger player is almost always better
* Younger players tend to have higher "floors" as prospects
* The older players who are exceptions usually have specific reasons they are outliers (Dwyane Wade's grades, Steph Curry's school)
* Teams usually identify the star. It's the secondary player they often miss (e.g. Green); that secondary player is the make-or-break guy for a lot of rebuilding franchises



Note: This is a Sixers website, but not a Sixers article.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... nteractive

He's a professor of mathematics and he authored this book on Basketball Analytics with Spatial Tracking (i.e. SportVU). I have this super ambitious goal of modeling basketball plays with some, um, let's just say optimal path planning and decision making theory, so I wanted to see what was out there in regards to spatial analysis of the game. I haven't really started reading it yet, but I'll post some stuff if I find it interesting.

Please do.

What are the assumptions that would go into this, though?

Scouting-informed Player Projections (efficiency on the final year of the rookie contract) http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/05/23/who ... nba-draft/



Comparisons with last year:

Player BodPaws
Ben Simmons 9.38
Karl Towns 8.51
Jahlil Okafor 7.89
Brandon Ingram 7.80
D'Angelo Russell 7.48
Deyonta Davis 5.97
Stanley Johnson 5.90
Frank Kaminsky 5.86
Kevon Looney 5.84
Diamond Stone 5.84
Justise Winslow 5.83
Dragan Bender 5.83
Jakob Poeltl 5.79
Myles Turner 5.78
Delon Wright 5.52
Bobby Portis 5.41
Henry Ellenson 5.35
Willie Cauley-Stein 5.24
Denzel Valentine 5.23
Kris Dunn 5.16
Tyus Jones 5.10
Kelly Oubre 5.07

Edit:

SI-PAWS Update

http://counting-the-baskets.typepad.com ... board.html

Why is Ruth not on your list? Liveball verses deadball isn't real anyway but Ruth is the one who turned it into the live ball era.

It is real, but not in the way people think. The ball was switched much earlier (I think it was 1911), so there actually is a different ball. Second, in about 1920, they stopped using the same ball all game. Third, the spitball was outlawed in 1921. Fourth, they shrunk the strikezone a bit. The last one might be fake, but the first three are real. Either way, there was a transitionary period from about 1908 to the mid-'20s.

Because they had short career length and retired or were out of baseball at their peaks. Typically they are guys who aren't great bats and once their defense goes aren't useful to keep around.