2021-2022 MAVS NEWS: 4th in West | WCF loss [ARCHIVED]

[mavsluvr]

I haven't read the book, but I have now read some Q&As with him. In general terms (and not focusing on +/- (which I'm not that keen on, at least on an individual level), he comes across as trying to face both ways - as trying to take care to discuss the limitations of what basketball stats can tell one whilst advocating for use of certain of them in some, and being conciliatory with sceptics. Maybe the book takes a more robust line, but my overall impression is that probably most readers could come away thinking their prior has been confirmed by what they read - statsy people thinking 'yeah, stats are good, but need to be done carefully' and non-statsy people thinking 'yeah, there's no point in any of that really - there's so many unaccounted things behind each number' (what the statsy people might call 'noise').

Interesting. In the book, he comes across (imo) as approaching the subject as a scholar or a teacher might, rather than advancing any particular agenda. I didn't so much come away with a sense that my "priors" were confirmed or denied, as much as feeling that I had learned some stuff about the way front offices use these kinds of data points.