1. ANALYTICAL TRAIL BLAZING How the Portland Trail Blazers are using analytics to drive strategy

2. BACKGROUND Ben Falk Basketball Analytics Manager The Job To help us make better basketball decisions through the use of statistical evidence and technology

4. NBA MLB NFL

5. NOT EVERYTHING “Stats vs. Scouts” Stats are not the be all and end all Intuition and expert opinion is valuable Experience is data – just a different kind

6. OUR TEAM Me Part-time statistical analyst PhD in Statistics Computer programmers 1 full time 1 part time This is a pretty big team by NBA standards

7. INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL Build internal team or use outside vendor? My approach: build internally Why? Competitive advantage Customization and control Security No risk of going out of business

8. THREE AREAS Collection Analysis Communication

9. COLLECTION You are only as good as your data Our data: Play by play College box scores Coming soon: SportVU Sports science

10. COLLECTION Basketball is a complex sport! Here’s some video…

11. COLLECTION Play by Play Q1 6:26: Wesley Matthews made 22 foot three-point jump shot (LaMarcus Aldridge assist).

12. COLLECTION SportVU

13. COLLECTION Sports Science

14. ANALYSIS Low hanging fruit Effective Field Goal Percentage Diminishing returns Subject matter knowledge

15. COMMUNICATION Analysis may be more simple, but process is not Why? Routines and behavior Ability to relate to data Communication is part of the job

16. COMMUNICATION “Turning words into numbers and numbers back into words” – Dean Oliver But communication is not just words Design Usability

17. COMMUNICATION “Brilliant insights” meet communication bottleneck Effective Field Goal Percentage Can the eye pick this up? If not, how do we communicate it?

18. EXAMPLES

19. THE DRAFT Collection Historical data going back 20+ seasons Statistical and biographical and anything else Analysis Advanced statistical modeling Subject matter knowledge Communication Uncertainty Ultimately a binary decision

20. COACHING STRATEGIES Collection Easy to search format Prepared for anything Analysis How much can we really say? Experience + stats Communication Reports that can be understood Data visualization

21. DANGERS

22. POWER = DANGER SIMPLICITY

23. DANGERS Know what the stats are measuring Measuring wrong is worse than not measuring at all Know the assumptions your stats are making Kevin Durant and Wayne Winston

24. DANGERS Know the subject matter Alternate explanations Correlation vs. causation XKCD: http://xkcd.com/552/http://xkcd.com/552/

25. THANK YOU

26. ben.falk@trailblazers.com