Stop me if you’ve heard this one: An NFL head coach decides to go for it on fourth down in a big, closely fought game. The team fails the attempt and goes on to lose the game. Fans are outraged, and media members are contemptuous. It’s a scene we’ve seen play out dozens of times […]
Properly measuring the greatness of Bill Russell, the legendary Boston Celtics center who died Sunday at the age of 88, has always been a challenge in our modern, metrics-obsessed era of NBA analysis. Russell’s titles — 11 as a player, two of which also came as a coach — are unparalleled in the history of […]
Wheelchair rugby used to be called Murderball, so that should tell you something about how the athletes feel about contact. Wheelchair basketball has its fair share of bangs and crashes, but it’s fairly similar to its “stand-up” counterpart. The two are among the most visible Paralympic sports, but how they inform their gameplay through statistics […]
Kirk Goldsberry is an ESPN analyst and FiveThirtyEight contributor. His new book, “SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA,” is available this week. In it, he examines the history of the NBA’s 3-point line and how players and teams are using it to change the game. We’re publishing an excerpt of […]
Quick — which NBA player is most integral to his team’s offense? Which player shoulders the biggest offensive burden? And to what degree are those questions even equivalent? Statistically, such concerns fall under the umbrella of “usage rate,” a term that colloquially describes an entire class of metrics tasked with quantifying the size of a […]