Slashdot Mirror
"Muthuball": How To Build an NBA Championship Team
First time accepted submitter Quillem writes "Muthu Alagappan, a 5'9" biomechanical engineering undergraduate at Stanford, made a presentation at this year's MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which might well do to basketball what Moneyball did to baseball. His contribution revolves around a topographical analysis of NBA games which contends that there are really 13 positions in basketball — not just five. Besides a rather patronising — but informative — read in Gentlemen's Quarterly, there are earlier stories over at Wired and NYT blogs. Muthu's talk and slides are also available."
I could personally care less about professional sports, however, there is a lot of money to be made from such analysis. Advertiseing revenues, statistical odds(for gambling), and learning more about a game that millions of people love than what those millions of people will ever find useful and just because we freaking can are great reasons to investigate this Stanford student's work.
Emulating a brad pit movie in order to advance the profitability of a stupid game that already rakes in tens of millions per team.
Great work, humanity will place you among the legends
I had a sarcastic reply but instead I'm going to simply say this: Donald Knuth was a basketball coach. See him talk about his baskeball coaching experience here.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
And they did it for a fraction of the price of the Yankee's team. To use the Slashdot mandated car analogy, this is the same thing as racing against a 911 with a chevy accent and almost winning. Sure, you lost, but you didn't have to spend nearly as much money as your opponent to compete.
The system employed in Moneyball were great for team owners and front offices. They've been HELL for fans and players though.
Traditionally, better players were kept around and you only traded marginal players. Now though, it's the good players who are traded in deals (not major stars like Chipper and A-rod, but still great players) for multiple, lesser players. And it keeps people like Matt Diaz changing teams every year or two. (he was traded from braves, to pirates, and back to braves in a single season)
As a baseball fan, I'm not a fan of this new team building strategy that's based on money.