Table of Contents
Foreword Tim Bontemps xi
Introduction xvii
An Introductory Note on Data and Context xxiii
1 What Basketball Analytics Is Not 1
2 Speaking the Dialect: Basketball Stats as Language 13
3 Credit Where It's Due 25
4 Goodhart's Law: On Playing the Drill 41
5 But Who's Counting? 57
6 Evidence of Things Not Seen: Impacts Behind the Box Score 75
7 Mind the Cap: Player Value and Roster Construction 95
8 The Midrange Theory 115
9 Chasing Ghosts: Evaluating Defense 141
10 Two for One and Other Trivialities: The Little Things 159
11 The 82 and The 16: Playoff Game Theory 173
12 The Practice of NBA Analytics 191
13 Trying to Do the Impossible Well: The Many Pitfalls of the NBA Draft 205
14 Next? 225
Appendix: Basketball Stats 101 235
Acknowledgments 259