Grizzlies hire John Hollinger

[Nick]

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/87451 ... ont-office

John Hollinger, a fixture of ESPN.com's coverage of the NBA for the past eight seasons and one of the leaders in basketball's rising statistical analysis movement in the past decade, is leaving his role as a columnist to become the vice president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Best known for hatching the formula behind every player's Player Efficiency Rating (PER) -- which attempts to quantify player performance through the use of an all-in-one rating -- Hollinger will begin work as a senior executive in the Grizzlies' basketball department next week.

"It's incredibly difficult to leave ESPN, but the chance to work for an NBA team and the Grizzlies' new ownership was an irresistible opportunity," Hollinger said Thursday.

That is do damn cool. I shall now live my fantasy vicariously through him.

[benji]

Well...shit...I just got a free year of Insider.

[NovU]

That's too bad. But I guess more Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith for you.

[shadowgrin]

Well...shit...I just got a free year of Insider.

Means less work for those chinese guys.

[Andrew]

Awesome opportunity for him, awesome hiring for the Grizzlies.

[shadowgrin]

How the NBA’s love for advanced stats has slowed our understanding of the game.

As soon as each statistician joined an NBA squad, sharing in public became off-limits—and so, gradually, the think tank closed shop. What were the teams paying for, after all, if their new stat gurus were just posting their ideas online for the other 29 franchises to read? This has had a paradoxical result: Because NBA teams embraced advanced stats so quickly, progress on basketball analytics has actually slowed down. The top minds are now all working in silos, not only unable to collaborate but actually competing against each other.

In theory, the Sloan conference is where all these analysts now gather to learn from each other. But they’re no longer working together, as they once did on that Yahoo message board. Daryl Morey admits that, from an academic perspective, it would be fun to drop the iron curtain dividing all of the franchises so that everybody could work in unison to hash out what’s probably the greatest data challenge in the history of sports. “Maybe someday when we all get fired we could get together, but right now our jobs are to win for our teams, so we focus on that,” he says. “Our businesses aren’t for the public domain. Knowledge in general will slow down, but hopefully knowledge that gives us an edge will not."

[NovU]

I was introduced to the stats by you bastards, lamrock, grin, and especially that drunken femist benji whom I can't thank enough, for curse of the forsaken. It just made my life much harder. I often became one of a few that had to fight against a huge world, like entire Kobe nation which included most of my friends who actually are hockey fans but somehow heard about Kobe and Lakers.

Anyways, iirc Dean Oliver used to discuss often at b-r.com blogs. Then from sometime ago, Neil(b-r blogger) stopped updating the site and no more discussions were to be seen. I guessed he got hired by some sort of basketball team. There was also one website owned by some statistician which I often had fun visiting because of resourceful analysis based on metrics. Then he left a message on his page that since he's accepted a job offer from a team, he no longer can't share anymore basketball related articles/analysis with public.

And there were couple more sites which I know of that stopped updating or entirely closed. I think teams might have called, it's a possibility at least.

[benji]

Neil still posts on the blog and works for Sports Reference. They just merged the blogs into one central sports-reference blog.

Dean Oliver worked for Denver and Seattle, he's now at ESPN. Dan Rosenbaum worked for the Cavs for a while, might still in some capacity. Bob Chakin used to work for the Nets and still does work with the Heat. Roland Beech (82games) works for the Mavs eventually as a coach. The basketballvalue guy works for the Sixers. A number of old APBRmetrics regulars like Ed Kupfer are with the Rockets.

[NovU]

Great to see some of statisticians being put to actual use. I don't care if they compete against each other and if their studies will be kept confidential. It's a step forward for the sport. And we always have upcoming 'bright minds' to look forward to, like basketball gurus with enormous game knowledge here in our forum like this guy.

Roland Beech (82games) works for the Mavs eventually as a coach.

The Mavs didn't have to do anything in the 2011 Finals. LeBron just stood in the corner and choked. The Mavs didn't even have to guard him.

[shadowgrin]

The Mavs still have to defend Wade that's why he was unable to bail LeBron's choking ass out