Ben Seasly

Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric

3/24/2015
Annotated Bibliography
ABSTRACT:
My topic is what role advanced basketball analytics have in the evaluation of players, both in
front offices and the media. This topic interests me as a huge NBA basketball fan who reads
articles about the NBA almost every day. As I have read these articles over the past few years, I
have noticed a concerted effort in using and integrating analytics to describe players and teams in
ways that have never been done or accepted before. This has led to a greater level of
understanding of the game, but it has also stirred up controversy, as old-school players and
coaches utterly reject the idea that analytics can measure a players ability. I will argue that
analytics, when used correctly can only be beneficial to teams and the media.
MLA CITATIONS AND ANNOTATIONS:
Drakos, Mark C. et al. Injury in the National Basketball Association: A 17-Year Overview.
Sports Health 2.4 (2010): 284290. PMC. Web. 19 Mar. 2015.
This government publication shows a statistical analysis of injuries over the course of years to
show how teams can evaluate injuries in players. This article is more concerned with
highlighting the prevalence of injuries and doing what they can to prevent them from happening.
However, it can also show how teams evaluate players who have a large injury history, a big
aspect of what my paper is about. The author seems to have a concerned attitude towards the
subject of injuries in players, an attitude that most of the time cannot be shared in front office
decision making which is generally most concerned with the bottom line: winning. While this
article does not show exactly how the business side of things use this information, it is helpful in
providing the kind of data that front offices will look at, and based on the players mentioned in
the article and their salaries, we can extrapolate how front offices value them.
Taragano, Martin. Pro Basketball Statistics: Top Players and Teams by Game, Season, and
Career. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993. Print.
Pro Basketball Statistics is a print-based book that provides a context for the role of statistics in
basketball before modern analytics were introduced. These statistics, such as points, assists, and
rebounds, were once thought the be-all end-all of basketball stats. Now we know that they only
tell part of the story. This would provide strong background for the world of basketball statistics
in the 20th century. This book also provides historical context for statistical evaluations of
legendary players and can therefore provide some relativity to the stars of todays game versus
the stars of the past. However, this will mostly be used to show that comparisons based solely on
traditional statistics are not very accurate, as they do not account for pace, defensive ability, or
style of play (post up vs. guard-oriented games) to name only a few detriments. These
comparisons will hopefully be remedied by the next source I will use, A COMPREHENSIVE
MANUAL OF BASKETBALL STATISTICS.

Tubbs, Jeffrey Lynn. "A COMPREHENSIVE MANUAL OF BASKETBALL STATISTICS."

Order No. 8216510 Middle Tennessee State University, 1982. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 19
Mar. 2015.
A Comprehensive Manual of Basketball Statistics provides both traditional statistics and
modern statistics in the world of basketball. While it serves the same purpose of Pro Basketball
Statistics above, it also acknowledges and explains new burgeoning statistics in the modern
world. In addition to providing background, it also contains hard data that can be used as a
reference to show what the best teams emphasize and exploit. Going off of the point made in the
annotation of Pro Basketball Statistics, this book will help conextualize statistics, showing that
there are many factors to consider when ranking players across eras. For instance, in the 60s,
games were played at a much higher pace, without yet the tremendous athletes that we see in the
NBA today, and with no three point line. This led to a lot of shots near and below the rim,
making it much easier for an athletic big man, like Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain, to average
30 rebounds a game, a feat which has now been done only twice in the 2000s.
Bartholomew, James T., and David A. Collier. "The Role of Contested and Uncontested Passes in
Evaluating Defensive Basketball Efficiency." Journal of Service Science (Online) 4.2 (2011): 33.
ProQuest. Web. 19 Mar. 2015.
The Role of Contested and Uncontested Passes in Evaluating Defensive Basketball Efficiency
is an in-depth article written about one of the hardest aspects of basketball to quantify with
statistics: defense. This focus on defensive efficiency statistics shows the new ways that analytics
are being used to build better team strategies. By using better team strategies, front offices can
tailor their moves and player evaluation to fit the best strategies, for instance, a player who has
versatility between systems on defense would be more valuable than a one-track player. This
article provides a concrete example of how teams are using new analytics to better their teams.
These analytics show the great depths to which modern analytics have gone, and the lengths they
need to go to quantify something as inquanitifiable as individual defense. From this, I will be
able to reference this and other articles and be more informed fully on the topic.
"Making Sense of Basketball's Analytics Explosion." University Wire Mar 11 2014 ProQuest. 24
Mar. 2015.
The article Making Sense of Basketballs Analytics Explosion in the University Wire tries to
explain to fans what exactly the recent influx of data and analytics means for the NBA. This
includes explaining what it can do, what it can not do, what it shows, and what it can not show.
This article does a good job of summarizing what exactly analytics are and attempts to explain
how front offices use these to evaluate players and systems, which is exactly what my paper is
about. While this article can never go as deep as a journal or as deep as my paper will go, it will
certainly aid me as a general reference for the broad basis of my topic. While acting as a broad
overview, it also goes into specific details and, most importantly, shows how the common fan
and media member can and should use this data to their benefit.
Jensen, Daniel, and Hyowon Ban. Spatial Analysis and Visualization in the NBA using GIS
Applications. ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2014.
Spatial Analysis and Visualization in the NBA using GIS Applications offers a very unique
perspective to the topic of analytics in the NBA. Rather than focusing on the analytics
themselves, this journal instead focuses on the technology needed to create such data, an aspect

often forgotten in the grand scheme of things. It tells how GIS applications can track players
bodies and movements across the courts, measuring things such as speed, distance travelled,
spacing, usage percentage, and many more different statistics. In doing so, GIS machines can
measure fatigue based on a players average speed and distance travelled and if their current state
measures up to those averages. In measuring spacing, the machines can determine how
effectively team offenses that are spread out operate (spoiler: they operate better than cramped
offenses). In examining the technology behind it, we can more fully understand how this data is
taken, and from there examine the data with more knowledge of the data itself.