Stats all there is to it!

Basketball coaches have been keeping stats since the dawn of the peach basket. At first, only points were kept, then missed shots, steals, turnovers, rebounds, then blocked shots and assists. The shot charts showed where each shot was taken and whether it was made or missed.

Most coaches still live by these basic stats. They are seat-of-the-pants analysts who believe they can pick up everything they have to know from watching the game.

Unfortunately, these basic stats no longer tell the coach the whole story - exactly what is going on out there on offense and defense, or reveal the sophisticated nuances of the game, like whether your team held the other team to .8 points per possession while running a man-to-man as compared to 1.1 points per possession while playing a zone.

Defense Efficiency

POSSESSIONS PLAYED   POINTS ALLOWED   DEFENSIVE EFFICIENCY

Defense                   PP          PA         DE

Man                       23          20        .83
1-3-1                     25          16        .64

Players

Cribbs                    51          31        .61
Simpson                   35          27        .77
Fellers                   59          51        .86
Dietrich                  66          60        .91
Johnson                   57          55        .96
Murray                    43          42        .98
Crystal                   25          33       1.32
Vinson                     8          16       2.00
Rose                       4           9       2.25

Note: The Efficiency Ratings are not for individual performance but
how the team performs while each of the players is in the game. The
play-by-play stats enable you to compute similar stats for each
offense and defense.

Neither can the basic stats reveal how many points you gained or lost while a certain player was in the game, nor can they measure the effect of your press, nor how much each player affected your team's scoring and defense.

To accurately measure these things, the stats have to be based on the play-by-play action, including substitutions, which offense and defense you are using, whether your opponents are pressing, who shoots, who scores, who steals, who assists - all in the sequence in which they occur in each possession.

I originally designed this stat system as a project for a basketball theory class. At the time, it took me several hours to compute everything after the game. After working as a computer programmer, I finally found the time to write a stats program on a PC.

I kept stats for several teams, ranging from junior high girls to college men. The program tracked the efficiency of each offense and defense, and provided a rating for each player based on his/her stats and their effect on the team performance.

The expanded stats revealed several things that had never previously been possible to record. For example, an awkward player who averaged about eight minutes playing time and scored about one point per game was rated the second or third most valuable player on the team!

It appeared that because she was a very poor shooter, she would immediately look inside to pass thus picking up a couple of assists per game. She would also deflect a lot of passes on defense which led to steals, and rebounding errant shots off the boards.

All of this was being picked up in the stats. Unfortunately, she began listening to her brother, who advised her that if she wanted to play more, she had better start shooting more. And so she began shooting more - and doing less.

Her rating began dropping and she stopped getting any playing time. She decided to drop out at the end of the season.

We believe that if her coach had used the computer stats and realized her value, he would have encouraged her to keep her part-time role and continue to be an asset to the team.

The rating system can help a coach decide which players deserve more playing time. One coach told me that the rating system is worth the cost of the software just for showing parents why their kids are sitting on the bench.

Another team ran two defenses: (1) a half-court press that fall back into a 1-3-1 zone and (2) a straight man-to-man.

In its district championship game, which the team lost by three points, it used the trap very effectively until the coach decided to switch to a man-to-man for most of the second half.

The trap had been giving up .64 points per possession. The man to man gave up .83 points, or about one more point every five possessions. The chart shows the sample defensive efficiency statistics for each defense and each player.

In that same game, a player came off the bench and the team immediately went on an 8-0 run. The player then committed a turnover that led to a layup, and she was benched the rest of the game, even though she had really sparked the team while she was in.

If her coach could have seen the stats during the game, he might have won the game and advanced to the state tournament.

Coaches have many things to keep track of during a game and are required to make quick decisions. Obviously, they can make great use of anything that can show them which offense or defense is working best or which players are helping the most (or least).

The stats can be kept on paper if enough stat keepers can be trained for the job. A very successful college team I have followed the last few years has three assistant coaches track every possession.

The job can be done much easier with a computer. The vital thing in all stat-keeping is to train the star-keepers (or their spotters) to recognize every offense and defense.

The job also requires software capable of tracking all of the aforementioned factors and PC. A laptop PC is handy for viewing stats on the bench, especially for road games. Prices are steadily dropping for PCs and even laptops can be bought for around $1,100.

Some coaches have told me they've never been able to find a student capable of keeping stats on a computer, but I have had even eight-graders master my stats system in about two hours. It just requires some practice.

If you believed that free throwing could help you win games, you'd train your players until they could make them. If you believe that good stats can help you win, you will train your stat-keepers to record the information you need.

SUMMARY

To summarize: Stats should be based on possessions, not game, and must measure more than point totals. It must reveal the kind of impact each player has on the team performance; offense, and the points allowed by each defense.

Finally, the information has to be made available during the game so that the coach can use it to greatest advantage.

Pro teams are already using systems like this, colleges are beginning to use them, and many high schools will be using them in a few years.

In a profession measured by wins and losses, coaches have to avail themselves of anything that can improve their teams' chances of winning.

RELATED ARTICLE: Computer Rule Change

Shortly before this article was prepared for publication, the high school rules committee banned the use of courtside computers during games by the coach, since it would give the home team an advantage. But coaches will stiff be allowed to use the statistics generated by computers.

About the Author

Steve MacKinney is a graduate of Evangel College where he played basketball for four years, and holds an MBA from Drury College. He has worked in software development for the past 25 years, and has developed and is marketing the BESTAT basketball statistics system.