Lakers' LeBron James Jokes He's Not 'Great Friends' With the Analytics Department
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James quipped he's not "great friends" with the analytics department when discussing how much a shooter's momentum and rhythm matter in the flow of the game.
During the newest episode of Mind the Game, co-host Steve Nash said analytically driven people point to firm data and give less consideration to whether player has the "hot hand." But he and James agreed the more dispassionate rational approach doesn't capture reality.
"I get it, this is what they do," James said in regard to the analytics side. "... There's a feeling on the court that there's nobody that's not on the court could ever understand. And there's momentum plays and momentum shots that does not show up in the analytic data.
"Anthony Edwards' dunk [in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals] over Kevon Looney is just a different momentum play. In Game 1, the Draymond threes he was making in Game 1 in Minnesota is a different momentum shot than if somebody else made it."
Neither side is ever going to concede defeat in this debate and there's some compelling arguments for both points of view.
James, for example, is a career 50.6 percent shooter. He'll have good shooting nights and bad shooting nights, and they'll all even out in the end. The odds of him making a shot in a given situation are the same regardless of whether he's 5-of-5 or 0-of-5 in his last five attempts.
At the same time, the game state for each scoring opportunity can be different, and momentum is a very real thing intrinsically. If your confidence is building and you have more self-belief, then it stands to reason your success rate could have a corresponding bump. Along the same lines, launching a three-pointer early in the first quarter won't have the same pressure as spotting up in the fourth of a close contest.
There's always going to be a push and pull between data analysts and those going more off experience and intuition. At the end of the day, that's probably how it should be.
