Dr. Wayne Winston's work may do to the NBA what Sabermetrics did to MLB
http://sports.yahoo....00962--nba.html
It's no coincidence that when sports teams and Fortune 500 companies want an edge, they call on Winston, whose impact on basketball equals Sabermetrics' on baseball -- but, on steroids.
"Obviously he helped start the basketball analytics revolution with us," said Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, whose team won the 2011 NBA championship in part because of Winston. "We've been working with him for 12 years and he's proven year after year when people doubted him that his stuff works."
Their first big client was the Dallas Mavericks.
"Wayne and I were cocky and obnoxious when we both started doing this," Sagarin said. "We would say there may be better people in math than us, but very few. In sports, there may be more passionate, but very few. But combine the two, there's no one better.
"Literally, no one can duplicate what we do."
Here's an example of a single-cell Excel formula Winston wrote:
IF(AND(OFFSET($F$1,AK$13,0,1,1)=1,COUNTIF($S26:$AB26,OFFSET($E$1,AK$13,0,1,1))=1),1,
IF(AND(OFFSET($F$1,AK$13,0,1,1)=0,COUNTIF($S26:$AB26,OFFSET($E$1,AK$13,0,1,1))=0),1,IF(OFFSET($F$1,AK$13,0,1,1)=2,1,0)))
Think of the potential.
If the Los Angeles Lakers had Winston in their corner, they would realize that forward Earl Clark is horrible in the second half. Instead, the Lakers should be playing a lineup of Steve Nash, Jodie Meeks, Kobe Bryant, Metta World Peace and Dwight Howard, Winston said. (See Row 15 compared to Row 1).
Here is a breakdown of some of the Lakers' lineup combinations and how effective each player is in each quarter as of Feb. 22.
FULL ARTICLE inside link.
