The Golden State Warriors front office has taken aim at being the NBA leader in basketball analytics.
Back in early 2013, #DubNation’s assistant general manager and majority owner Joe Lacob‘s son, Kirk Lacob, revealed that the Warriors went so far as to installing cameras in the rafters to capture details of every play and player on the court at any given moment:
Yeah, we use these cameras up in the rafters up top, so you’ll never see them, but they’re capturing 24 frames per second from six different angles and basically creating a full three-dimensional log of the game and capturing every single movement of the player, the ball, the referees. It’s a lot of data and it comes spit out to us in a giant [Microsoft] Excel file, and then we have to figure out what to do with it.
Rusty Simmons of the SF Chronicle spoke with Kirk about the Warriors’ future plans for the use of in-depth analysis.
“We always want to be pioneers, first-adopters, because we believe that having the most information gives us the best chance of making the right decisions,” said Warriors assistant general manager Kirk Lacob…
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“I don’t understand anyone who says, ‘I don’t like analytics,’ because they’re basically saying, ‘I like to just guess.’ Analytics doesn’t mean stats; it means using information or data to make informed decisions.”
Lacob said, including himself, the Warriors employ three people dedicated to collecting analytical data in additional to a fourth from the Santa Cruz Warriors who also helps out.
“It’s essential in the current NBA to get any edge that you can, and we’ve found small edges using analytics,” Lacob said. “As the technology gets better, the edge might become smaller and smaller, but it’ll always be meaningful.”
However, all that knowledge is only useful if you can bring it to team coaches in a helpful manner. Lacob said it is important to consider how the coach might best use the information:
“With coaches, there can be an inherent freeze to analytics, so it’s important to listen to them on how they want the information. They might tell us to ask the questions and provide the answers, or they might ask us questions that need analytical answers.”
Analytics can even help decide which players to put on a roster:
“In discussing any player personnel decisions, the stakes are so high that we have to consider everything,” Lacob said. “It has become more intense because of the media scrutiny and access to data the general public has…
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“In the end, we make a decision, and the data augments that decision. At the end of any decision, you better be really comfortable with it. If you start second-guessing yourself, you won’t be ready for the next decision. Having data does help, because you can feel comfortable that you made the right decision, regardless of how it turns out, if you follow what your organization believes in.”
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