Oliver - Basketball on Paper: Rules and Tools for Performance Analysis

on Paper

Rules and Tools for
Performance Analysis

DEAN OLIVER

Potomac Books, Inc.
WASHINGTON. D.C.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dad for buying me the first Bill James Baseball Abstract in 1984. Thanks to Bill James for writing that Baseball Abstract and all the other books that inspired so much, then releasing the methods to those of us who follow. Thanks to Dad for buying me Defensive Basketball. Thanks to Frank McGuire, Dean Smith, and Clair Bee for their contributions to Defensive Basketball and for helping to make coaching such an honorable profession.

Thanks to Coach Gene Victor for making me an assistant coach, valuing my opinion as a precocious college student, and setting me up as a scout with Bertka Views. Thanks to Bill and Solveig Bertka for their guidance and trust while I worked for Bertka Views. Thanks to the Seattle Supersonics organization and to the Charlotte Sting organization for the opportunity to see their needs and for boosting my stock with publishers. Thanks in particular to Yvan Kelly and John Maxwell for being friends on the inside.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Doug Steele and Dean Lavergne for providing me with electronic versions of the data used here. They made my life so much easier by doing quality work over a long period of time. Im sure I owe their wives/girlfriends a few trips to bed-and-breakfasts to make up for the time theyve allowed their significant others to spend helping me out.

Thanks to Mohan Sandhu and Jessica Donovan for reading draft chapters and providing comments.

Thanks to Clay Kallam of the Full Court Press (www.fullcourt.com) for numerous thought-provoking conversations.

Thanks to Swarna Ghanta for initially and perhaps unintentionally inspiring me to write at all.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my very good friend Dave Carta for providing me shelter, wireless Internet, comments on chapters, and a good atmosphere for getting this done. I really cant say thank you enough.

Jefferson Sweeneys complimentary videotape helped out on one of those chapters.

David Berri provided me with inside information on sports economics that helps to make my work a bit deeper. Im glad the Internet introduced us.

Thanks to ENVIRON International for giving me the time off to make it work.

Thanks to Ross Russell, who designed the cover, and to the basketball that gave its life for that cover.

Abbreviations

Chapter 1

How to Read This Book

One of the most common social introductions is So what kind of work do you do? We define ourselves so much by our jobs that the first thing we want to know about the stranger next to us is what job defines them. But what is it that a thirty-second summary of a job can tell the socially correct stranger? Arent we told by movies like Its a Wonderful Life and City Slickers that its our life outside of work that should define us? Wouldnt it be better to ask someone about his wife and kids or about, as Jack Palance suggested with that single intimidating finger raised, the one thing that is most important to him?

Thats not why youre here, though, deciding whether to buy this book. You do want the thirty-second summary of my job. Rather than answering with a generic summary, I want to specifically address the different possible readers of the book. Each audience is likely to look for different things, and my suggestions to them on how to read the book can provide a decent overview without stealing the thunder of the chapters.

Coaches, Scouts, and Players

Lets start with what you should not expect in this book. This book does not introduce new offensive structures or defensive schemes. It does not diagram specific plays, describe training regimens, provide shooting drills, or reveal ways to improve your vertical leap. On the bookshelves of your local library or bookstore, you can find several books that cover these topics.

Instead, this book was originally conceived as an aid to coaches in a more general manner. The most obvious specific contribution is through several statistical measures. The book provides formulas for evaluating a team and the contributions of individuals to team success. The formulas arose out of a desire to better describe the goals and structure of the game. For instance,