Joe John: The face of analytics It's a good piece where he doesn't really take a side one way or the other. Still, it's been ripped to shreds by folks a billion times dumber than Lehrer. Criticism is criticism, nonetheless. It's been fun reading it all because it's all worth it.
ANYWAY, Lehrer takes a couple of paragraphs to highlight Joe John "J.J." Barea of the Dallas Mavericks.
Lehrer brings up that Barea -- statistically -- was a pretty ordinary player in the regular season and the first 98 percent of the playoffs when he was inserted in the Mavericks' starting line-up in games five and six of the Finals. As we all know, the Mavericks won those games and the title.
This, Lehrer notes, was the Mavericks ignoring any statistical analysis of Barea's game and made a decision based on Barea's seemingly connection with winning game.
There are several problems with this analysis by Lehrer (again, a dumb guy calling a genius to the carpet). First, I must say that no one is a bigger critic of Barea and his game than me.
OK, that's out of the way.
The Mavericks and Stats
Mark Cuban, Rick Carlisle and the Mavericks have been pretty early stalwarts in the statistics/sabermetrics movement in the NBA. Several years ago, Cuban hired Roland Beech, the man behind 82games.com. According to Cuban, post-Finals:
“Roland was a key part to all this. I give a lot of credit to Coach Carlisle for putting Roland on the bench and interfacing with him, and making sure we understood exactly what was going on. Knowing what lineups work, what the issues were in terms of play calls and training.”
Cuban is not saying the Mavericks don't make gut moves nor do they ignore statistics. In fact, it seems that Beech's reach within the organization is wide and highly regarded. Thus, the insinuation that starting Barea -- a statistically ordinary player to, maybe, the untrained eye -- was not based on stats is off base. I don't think there's a question as to whether there was an advantage. However, I didn't need stats to tell me that Barea would be able to blow by Mike Bibby (which he did), but I bet the stats would support this ... that Bibby is old and can't stop the much faster Barea.
Barea's Value
Barea is just not a statistically ordinary or poor basketball player. He's an extremely one-dimensional basketball player. He's got two things going for him: A complete lack of fear and speed. Unfortunately, those two assets help him in one regard: Getting relatively close to the hoop on offense and, thus, opening up potentially open shots for shooters.
As close as Barea shoots most of the time, he doesn't make a lot of them. I would bet he makes more from 23 feet with his feet beneath him than his wild floaters three feet from the basket. Mostly because there are 7-foot monsters at the three-point arc.
Still, he's a so-so passer, a poor defender and his size disadvantage kills him in a lot of facets of the game. Don't get me wrong, he has his place in the NBA and as long as he has those wheels, a team will want him and he'll have value.
My point: Barea has little value statistically and actually; however, that one ounce of value (speed) was worth more than DeShawn Stevenson's pound of value (defense, size). It doesn't make Barea an exponentially better basketball player, but it does make him exponentially quicker and that's what they needed. You don't put your best sprinter in the discus throw.
Barea's Value in Winning
Fourth quarter. Game on the line. Who's on the court? Dirk. Marion. Chandler. Kidd. Terry.
The real issue is this: What is more important, winning the first quarter or fourth quarter?
