An NBA Superstar with No Stats (2009)

[randomwalker]

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=481392

I voted it up anyway, that's how much I like this article. After reading this comment thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=481557 on that page, I decided to read Moneyball, and it was one of the most riveting books I've read.

Thanks, HN.

[10ren]

For those who like to highlight text as you read, you can shut down the nytimes' messing with you, by adblocking all its js, from all its servers - and reloading. This filter worked:

    http://*.nytimes.com/**/*.js

[nzmsv]

The file responsible for the annoying search feature is altClickToSearch.js. Here's my filter:

  ||nytimes.com/js/*/altClickToSearch.js

[Qz]

I don't even like sports but this article had me glued to my monitor at 4:48 am.

[hugh3]

Really? I don't like sport and I found I couldn't understand it at all.

For instance, you have to read to paragraph 4 to find out that "Houston" is the same team as "The Rockets". I never quite figured out whether Battier and Ming are on the same team.

And "The game drew a huge national television audience, which followed Bryant for his 47 miserable minutes: he shot 11 of 33 from the field and scored 24 points." -- I have no idea what that means or whether it's a lot.

[pmccool]

The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places.

[jamesbritt]

"The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places."

I was just wondering if there were parallels for this in programming.

The obvious might be the various approaches and "methodologies" to programmer or team productivity based on dubious or non-existent hard data.

But I'm more wondering if there are tools or techniques that don't get any accolades (like, say, MVC or TDD or the framework of the week) but have a peculiar synergistic effect that ends up providing significant (and possibly counterintuitive) value.

What's the "Shane Battier" of software development practices?

And how would you know?

[raganwald]

Bertie Wooster comes out of 21 Club late one night and sees Oofy Prosser staring intently at the pavement out front.

What's up?

I lost my favourite collar stud.

Right here?

No, somewhere down the street.

Then why are you looking for it here?

The light's better over here.

*

That being said, Bayesian Search works a little like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory

[csytan]

I enjoyed the article last time, and enjoyed re-reading it again. Here's a youtube video, if like me, you hadn't seen Battier play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4aDM5d27_w

[pkulak]

I've been noticing the same kind of play from Nicolas Batum over the last couple years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Q4GVXGMlE

[trun]

Extremely long, but definitely worth the read.

[mncaudill]

It's hard to go wrong with anything written by Michael Lewis.

[b0b0b0b]

that's called face guarding, and this is a widely known legal maneuver. Perhaps it's not prevalent because you don't pad your stats with it, but I bet it's easy for the shooter to draw a foul from the defender.

[mirkules]

The article touches on predicting stats, and I'm wondering what kinds of predictive algorithms would be used in a situation like this?

[leftnode]

As a side note, why do you have to login to email this article to a friend? My friend and I are huge Rockets fans, and I know he'd love to read this, but forcing me to sign in to email it to him is ridiculous.

[albertsun]

You could just copy the URL...