You see Ty Lawson.
They see 1.03 transition points per possession, a .339 adjusted field-goal percentage from 17 feet to the 3-point line and the 86th percentile, league-wide, of left-side isolation kicks.
You see Lawson guarding Orlando's Jameer Nelson.
They see video clip after clip of Nelson utilizing his right hand off the dribble, with data verifying that he does so on 77.1 percent of his isolation possessions.
You see the Nuggets and Magic.
They see Synergy and Sportstec.
Denver's coaches utilize these two computer programs to see the game a different way. A sophisticated way. A smarter way. But is it a better way?
"There's always going to be a difference between new school and old
The Denver Post's Benjamin Hochman posts analysis, notes and more on this blog focusing on the Denver Nuggets.
school, and some people will say a lot of this is for little result and (could be deemed) as wasted energy," Nuggets assistant coach Chad Iske said. "Who knows exactly what's right? It can be what you need it to be. Some coaches like it more than others, some coaches don't want to flood your players' brains and let them use their instincts and be free, and other guys believe you have to take advantage of every advantage you've got."As for the Nuggets, some of their success can be attributed to the methodical and meticulous analysis of these systems by the front office, coaching staff, scouts and video coordinators.
Synergy is a site that provides unfathomably detailed statistical breakdown to subscribers, displaying trends about players and teams, along with what it calls "Digital DNA." And Sportstec is a video system that classifies every play of every game, by both the players involved and the actual play called by the point guard.
Harkening back to his early days of coaching in the 1980s, Nuggets coach George Karl said: "Just finding the tape was the big thing. Making sure you had the next game and had enough friends with enough organizations that they would send you the tape.
"Today, the system is demanding that you're prepared at a higher level. If you want to be the best, there are requirements. When Red Auerbach coached, those requirements probably weren't as high as they are now. But nobody knows if it's better. I am a believer that you can overcoach and overwork. But in the same sense, I think I work pretty hard."
"Games of odds"
Naturally, it was written by the "Moneyball" guy. Nearly four years ago, Michael Lewis shared with the masses how basketball people had changed how they viewed basketball.
"Outcomes," he wrote in a New York Times Magazine cover story, "are instead treated as a set of probabilities, even after the fact. The games are games of odds. Like professional card counters, the modern thinkers want to play the odds as efficiently as they can; but of course to play the odds efficiently they must first know the odds. Hence the new statistics, and the quest to acquire new data, and the intense interest in measuring the impact of every little thing a player does on his team's chances of winning."
The Nuggets, like many other teams, were already entrenched in this new-wave thinking. Now, coaching the Nuggets doesn't just mean coaching the Nuggets. It's assistant coach John Welch at his home, sitting between his 15-year-old and his 17-year-old, all doing homework on their laptops. It's Iske in his office, drawing up all of Orlando's end-of-game plays from Sportstec, so he could have them on paper for that night's game. It's a bleary-eyed Nuggets advance scout, at 1 a.m. in his Marriott hotel room, writing up a scouting report of the next opponent, using Sportstec to verify the plays he scouted and Synergy stats to back up or dispel the tendencies he saw in person.
"You'll see this tomorrow," Welch said from his office, the day before Denver's win against Orlando last week. "Fist up. He hits the elbow, he's going to go backdoor. Jameer goes, this guy pins down, he curls, and then the second curl comes and they try to score."
The process is sort of like farm to table. It starts with a Denver scout's pen, drawing a future opponent's play on paper. Then he will use a computer program called FastDraw to get all of that team's plays diagrammed on the computer. This is sent back to Denver, along with the scouting report, which is basically a CliffsNotes version of Synergy stats. From there, coaches can look up and view the plays on their laptops (for instance, isolation right, drives left, dribble jumper short, 17 feet, misses).
But none of this information matters if it isn't effectively relayed to the players. It is, in numerous ways. Printouts of the scouting reports. Sportstec video files put on the players' personal iPads. Video sessions. The morning shootaround. Coaches' speeches. And even during the game.
"Chad does as good a job as anyone in the league at recognizing the plays during the game," Welch said. "Some guys do it, but it doesn't help. He's able to say the right thing at the right time to get the player an edge."
Overanalysis can be overwhelming. Coaches try to slow the onslaught. As Welch said, a coach can see 100 things, but if he doesn't get that 100 down to single digits, a player probably remembers too much information.
Still, the onus is on the players. Lawson gave a glimpse into the Nuggets' woes this month when he said some players weren't paying attention to info written on the dry-erase board before games. The coaches can only do so much.
"I think every guy is different," Iske said, "and a lot of guys over the years haven't been interested, because they feel they just go out and play and just feel out the game. And then there are guys like Shane Battier who take it extremely seriously and know that every little advantage could be the different between a win and a loss."
In a danger zone
Karl is a fascinating hybrid, an old-school coach who embraces the new-school stats. To an extent.
"Coaches coach the game; we don't coach stats," he said. "I think statistics can be used to say something good about you and statistics can be used to say something bad about you. And the world of selling today is to be critical. I've read articles about synergy stats that are almost opposite of what I think is true. I have no idea how to fight that. It hasn't gotten in a danger zone, but could it get to a danger zone? I'm a little nervous, yeah."
A danger zone?
"To where you have so much change going on, because of stats and formulas and a 'Moneyball' mentality. There are stats for per how much money spent for each win and how much is spent for each jumper; you wonder where this is going. During the game, I look at stats sheets just to see who's playing where and what time, and maybe once in a while I look at the shooting percentages. I know how we're doing conceptually. I should have a feel for who's kicking my (butt) out there."
A fascinating take, no doubt. But Karl will also say that scouting analysis helped his team improve its pick-and-roll defense. In a recent stretch, Synergy said Denver was second-best in defending the pick-and-roll play, to which Karl replied, "We're not that good, not No. 2 in basketball."
There are benefits to using detailed statistics ? sometimes game-saving benefits. Iske talked about the 2009 playoffs. They had broken down the Dallas Mavericks' end-of-game plays, recognizing the same play over and over on Sportstec.
"We had actually worked on it in shootaround, showed it in video and talked about how we wanted to guard it," Iske said. "So, in the timeout, we said, 'You know if Jason Kidd is taking it out, this is the play right here.' And, bam! Chauncey (Billups) switched off the ball right into Jason Terry as he was going off, and we left Kidd open and disrupted them ? and they didn't get a shot off.
"It was great. It was perfect. How many times do you come out there with that sheet and the game doesn't end up close, or they run a different play. But, boom, you're sitting there, you've talked about it (in the huddle), and they set up exactly the way you just told them they would. And you take it away to win a game, let alone a playoff game? It doesn't get any better than that."
Stats galore
Synergy, used by numerous Nuggets coaches, scouts and executives, provides a fascinating array of statistics. Here are some random ones a fan might not see on average sports sites:
? The Nuggets are sixth-best in the NBA with the shot clock at four seconds or fewer, scoring 0.81 points per possession in that scenario.
? After timeouts, Denver is second- to-last in the league is points per possession (0.79)
? The Nuggets lead the league in percentage of possessions in transition (.174), but their points per transition possession ranks 19th (.110).
? Denver's defense varies. In regard to points allowed per possession, the Nuggets are ranked 23rd in post-ups and 29th against spot-up shooters, but excel in transition (second-best), off screens (third), isolation (third) and against pick-and-roll ball handlers (fourth).
Benjamin Hochman, The Denver Post
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