Dispatch from The Phone Booth: Notes from “The Analytics Scrimmage”

Photo courtesy of media.centredaily.com

N=1

…

Where N is equal to all basketball games played using intentionally modified rules to measure analytically-derived nuances of play.

What?

What I’m trying to say is that Tuesday afternoon in the District of Columbia was possibly a bit historic; no, not because of the sweltering heat. Rather, inside the Verizon Center Ted Leonsis and his Monumental Sports company – which owns the NBA Wizards, NHL Capitals, and WNBA Mystics – cooked up a science experiment. In an effort to increase appreciation for women’s athletics and further the dialogue on basketball analytics, the Mystics hosted an analytics-driven scrimmage against the Minnesota Lynx.

Who?

The Minnesota Lynx are a WNBA powerhouse. Armed with a dynamite trifecta of Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen and Seimone Augustus, Minnesota won it all two seasons ago, and lost to the eventual champion Phoenix Mercury in the conference finals last season. The Washington Mystics are young and up-and-coming, showing flashes of brilliance from behind-the-arc and on-the-boards in 2014.

In some ways, these two teams make for a great experiment – opposite ends of the spectrum, different play styles, and different influences. Jim Peterson is not only an Assistant Coach for the Lynx, he’s also the color commentator for the local Timberwolves broadcast (and friend of the website).

How?

The experiment was divvied into two periods of different rules:

Personally, I was most interested in the 1st period. My rough calculations approximate the usable court space to resemble something like this:

 The 1st period result was relatively un-dramatic – at face value:

Between Seth Partnow, Neil Greenberg and I, we only noticed one shot from Augustus that came near a restricted area. This is somewhat expected: from a recent interview with Zach Bennett, Jim Peterson noted

"“Seimone Augustus is one of the greatest midrange shooters in women’s basketball history, and it really kinda makes her have to revaluate how she’s going to play in this game”"

The 2nd period was a quite a bit different. The modifications to the shot clock and foul shooting changed the feel of the game. It also sped it up: the 1st period had taken roughly 35 minutes of real time, and the 2nd period was complete in about 25 minutes. While I enjoyed the pace the game took on, it’s tough to attribute the change; Seth and I felt it could have been the shortened shot clock, the newfound freedom to shoot from anywhere, both, or neither frankly – it was only an hour of basketball.

The most intriguing element to Period 2 for most fans is probably the Hack-a-licious modifications. Props to the referees and score-keepers on this one, they handled the chaos well. It turns out less foul shots and automatic points kept a crisp pace and pose a potential deterrent to fouling. The real-time differences were extremely noticeable:

There are potentially legitimate time-saving, entertainment-gaining facets to these modified rules. When it was all said and done, after 20 minutes of gameplay, the Mystics pulled out the W:

A couple tidbits on Period 2. First, that foul count is deceiving – most of the Mystic fouls came in the 2nd period where the points were partially automatic. Second, my barbaric means of data collection (THE IRONY!) counted 8 total shots that would not have counted in Period 1. I have no baseline for this count, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. Third, for comparison purposes these scores would equate to per 40-minute totals of 96 (Mystics) and 82 (Lynx). That’s a 24-point jump for the Mystics (we’re on to something here), and merely a 1-point increase for the Lynx. Again, hard to derive too much deep meaning from a single contest – but very, very interesting.

But, Why?

Your Honor, if it pleases the Court, I’d like to submit two items into evidentiary consideration.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit A was not openly discussed at the Verizon Center Tuesday, but it’s the elephant in the room – analytics vs. eyes, jocks vs. nerds, math vs. feel. None of these should be dichotomous, so I’m not rehashing what others have already done at great lengths. Exhibit B was openly discussed, as something of a backdrop – who argues with Phil? Is Phil out of touch? How is Phil’s system any different than today’s game? Those answer weren’t all that important on Tuesday – the fact that we were gathered there to study them was.

So…what did we learn?

Well for starters, we found out that Ted Leonsis is a faithful reader:

Fandom aside, there are some interesting takeaways from this experiment. One of the most glaring was defensive help strategies: if you know your opponent can not shoot from the midrange, why do you help? Why do you bite on the pump fake? How much harder do you close out? Natural instincts had to be fought off – players reluctantly passing instead of taking a floater, for example. The first period was a bit more awkward. There was one shot clock violation where no one was in the paint, and the defense was able to be so aggressive on the arch that all movement was stifled for 24 seconds. The defensive possibilities in a shot-controlled environment are endlessly nasty. Then, the second period was an accelerated, upbeat, freeing experience. It was a stark contrast to the first – with all kinds of relevance to the NBA playoffs. The offense was much more aggressive; pushing against a shorter clock, free to shoot from anywhere, and looking to draw fouls for automatic points.

Also, the full Q&A with Ted Leonsis before the scrimmage started is definitely worth a listen (I recorded it on my phone, but it turns out I’m not quite press-savvy yet)[1.

Here’s the official version

– ed.]:

Clinton Yates also has a great wrap-up of the event for The Washington Post. I’m pretty sure he was the guy I was shoving my phone into the armpit of. Sorry, Clinton.

I don’t want to sound like the ivory-tower snob always demanding more, but before we can draw meaningful, substantial conclusions, more data is necessary. However, this was a monumental first step in experimenting – for all the right reasons – about the art of the possible, and unlocking insights into what we don’t know. If anything, we didn’t get any answers today; rather, we’ve refined our questions. Hopefully this is only the beginning.