The last few days there's been a little controversy on Barkley teeing off on sports analytics.
"Charles Barkley took a social-media shot from Daryl Morey and returned fire with a vengeance Tuesday night, calling the Houston Rockets general manager "one of those idiots who believes in analytics."
"The Naismith Hall of Famer and TNT analyst then disavowed the widespread use of the practice in sports, saying its proponents were "a bunch of guys who have never played the game, and they never got the girls in high school."
"First of all I've always believed analytics was crap," Barkley said on TNT's postgame coverage of the Rockets' 127-118 win over the Phoenix Suns. "You know I never mention the Rockets as legitimate contenders 'cause they're not. And listen, I wouldn't know Daryl Morey if he walked into this room right now."
"Barkley made his case after saying the Rockets -- 36-16 and third in the West -- were poor on defense among playoff-contending teams despite being among the top statistical teams in the NBA defensively."
"Just because you've got good stats doesn't mean you're a good team defensively," Barkley said. "They're not a good defensive team. They gave up 118 points. No good team gives up 118 points."
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12308938/charles-barkley-fires-back-daryl-morey-houston-rockets-stats-idiot
In fairness, Morely did start the war of words when he tweeted this:
Best part of being at a TNT game live is it is easy to avoid Charles spewing misinformed biased vitriol disguised as entertainment
So who's right? I'm not sure what started this debate. I guess it's because Morley as a GM is all about analytics and Barkley doesn't show it respect? For me it comes down in part to how you define analytics.
"Barkley offered up the previous championship models of the Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls -- with the pairings of Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O'Neal and Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen -- and the current core of the San Antonio Spurs, with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Kawhi Leonard, as evidence that using statistics was not a sound basis for building a winning NBA team."
"They say that same crap in baseball, and they put these little lightweight teams together and they never win," Barkley said. "They're always competitive to a certain degree and they don't win. It's the same thing in the NBA."
"The Rockets' statistics are a mixed bag. They stand seventh in the NBA in points per game with 103.3 and 15th in points per game allowed at 99.6. Among their ESPN.com Hollinger Stats rankings, they are third in pace factor, 12th in offensive efficiency and seventh in defensive efficiency."
"The Rockets sucked for a long time, so they went out and paid James Harden a lot of money; they got better," Barkley said on the TNT postgame broadcast. "Then they went out and got Dwight Howard; they got better. ...
"The NBA is about talent," Barkley continued. "All these guys who run these organizations who talk about analytics, they have one thing in common -- they're a bunch of guys who have never played the game, and they never got the girls in high school, and they just want to get in the game."
"An NBA coach, speaking to ESPN.com senior writer Ramona Shelburne, said there is value in the use of analytics but that it is limited."
"To say they've revolutionized everything about coaching or basketball is just wrong," the coach said.
"The NBA coach said he uses analytics but that a lot of the statistics and formulas have been available for 10 years."
If the argument is about who's funniest, Barkley wins hands down. However, on the substance, I think he at least overstates the uselessness of analytics. It seems that it helped the Spurs who have been a dominant team for a long time. Yes, they have Tim Duncan but, I don't know if anyone who believes in analytics is going as far as saying that to succeed you don't need great talent. If they are then the deserve the scorn Barkley is heaping them/
I don't think there's any question that analytics helped the Oakland A's in baseball; it seems to be something for teams that have steep financial limits. In Baseball the A's are a 'small market team' while in the NFL we have thorough going socialism with the salary cap. In these situations analytics can help a team identify talent on the cheap.
Again, it depends on how you define analytics. If it simply means looking at statistics, well, that's been around for years and is so basic it's hard to see what the controversy is. On the other hand, if it is something that denies that talent matters, that's just absurd.
This is only even a worthwhile debate if it is neither so trivial as 'statistics can help you decide which players will be great' or 'analytic s deny talent matters.'
Interestingly, in Barkely's funny outburst, he did touch on another question that makes it sound like maybe the war is proxy for 'Nerds vs. Jocks'-where as a great former athlete Barkley is sniping at people who run things in sports who never played the game. I have to say, if this is the main criticism of analytic, it's very flimsy.
You don't have to be a former great athlete to run a team, certainly not as a GM or even as a coach. Just recently we did a post where we saw in football that today most NFL coaches were not players.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-nfl-is-game-of-untalented-older-men.html
Indeed, what strikes you in football, is how few coaches were great players-or increasingly at all, though even in the past when more were former players not many of them were great players. Mike Ditka is the exception not the rule.
This may be less the case in the NBA today you see more great players like Danny Ainge running very good teams In any case, Barkley's suggestion that you have to have been a talented player to run a team is clearly false
Talent may be more important in the NBA than even the other sports. Yet, talent though very important, isn't enough. Recently no less a talent than Magic Johnson was on Steve A's First Take and made the point that the model that worked for the Miami Heat of bringing in 3 great players and sitting back and winning championships may not be the model that works in the future.
A great team is more than just having the 5 greatest players in the world-that's an all-star team, not necessarily a great NBA team. What makes a team is well being a team. You can bring together stars and have them not successful as well as we've certainly seen before. This is why winning thorough free agency doesn't always get it done.
Ok, so I did mention Al Davis. Apparently he wasn't interested in analytics either. In recent years, he was an outlier among NFL teams in thinking that speed and athleticism can solve anything. Yet maybe one reason the once proud Oakland Raiders became so pitiful the last 12 years is Davis' stubbornness and refusal to adjust .
It's been suggested that he overrated speed and athleticism precisely because he never had any himself.
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