Advanced Analytics in Basketball

Written by Iván Fernández and Edgar Paz

Iván and Edgar are basketball analysts and founders of Pick StatsGal

Statistics has always been closedly related with basketball. There has always been a global interest to know who was the player with most scoring points, how many rebounds a team could grab... but all these basic figures were sometimes difficult to translate to players impact on a team or to measure how good a team was. Is it really better the offense of a team scoring 90 points per game than a team scoring 80 points per game?

Then, advanced statistics were introduced to basketball, the concept of the basketball as a turn-taking game and the definition of metrics like pace to measure the number of possession in a game brought a new vision over stats. Then mathematical regression models to see the real impact of a player in a team were also added, and the statistics based on different players combination... allowed staffs to evaluate their team and players performance in a much more accurate way.

The power of stats has been so strong that it has been expanding in most important leagues all over the world also bringing new technology to record as much information as possible for later analysis. And the reason of this expansion is that the results has been proved really successful till the point that is has been changing the way teams design their plays, focusing on getting open 3-points shots in catch and shoot situation, or how they use pick and roll to get advantages.

Teams that are wining championships are dedicating more effort to these analysis every year because these effort result in competitive advantage and let teams achieve their targets and titles.