PARIS (George Eddy's International Show) - The latest Sloan MIT Sports Analytics Conference has come and gone so this is a good time to see where we are concerning basketball.

Analytics is a way of using advanced data and video to evaluate as precisely as possible an individual or a team's performance level. Everyone agrees that traditional statistics only give an incomplete picture as far as judging performance.

In the USA, college coaches such as the late Dean Smith and John Wooden paved the way by going beyond the classic stat sheet in keeping track of all sorts of useful information. The day after a game, Smith's staff would spend FIVE hours breaking down the film, possession by possession, creating new categories of data revolving around things that Smith considered key to a winning performance. Taking charges, helping out, diving for loose balls, setting quality screens, offensive rebounds, contesting shots, deflecting passes, pressure defense, direct opponent's shooting percentage and blocking out were some of the multitude of data collected and put to good use.

The NBA kept sketchy stats at the start but with the very high economic investment involved today, it has caught up to and largely surpassed the NCAA level in the means given to data collection. All NBA teams have some sort of analytics' expert on staff to pour over the ultra-modern video sources in NBA arenas and use the latest computer programs efficiently. Teams like the Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs are at the forefront of this analytics revolution, whereas a team like the Los Angeles Lakers seems more reticent to go full throttle in that direction. The Spurs were voted as the franchise that uses analytics the best as can be seen in the way they won the title with a resolutely modern "pace and space" style which gives the priority to open three-point shots along with player and ball movement.

Taking the first quality, open shot by pushing the pace and increasing the number of possessions became fashionable with Mike D'Antoni's Steve Nash-led Suns and the Spurs took it to a new level by winning the title and making it to the last two NBA Finals with a supposedly aging team.

This season teams like the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks hope to win a title with a similar plan even though, obviously, each team is different and has its own identity and strong points.

San Antonio played better defense than D'Antoni's Suns, for example, but generally these teams all attack with the idea that ball-movers and penetrators who kick the ball out are more efficient than ball-stoppers like Carmelo Anthony who were dominating in the past when isolation play-also called "star-ball"- with your best player on offence were a la mode.

The arrival of the three-point shot was just as historically important to basketball as the creation of the shot clock.

Now, we are living a revival of team play which means that coaches are more important than ever towards building a franchise and an identity.

Mastering analytics is one more tool in the modern coach's toolbox. Some of the major tendencies of the moment are that lay-ups and three-pointers are better than contested two-point shots and an open look early in a possession has a higher success rate than a contested one late in the shot clock. My father would say that a lot of this is "the painful elaboration of the obvious" because we've heard coaches say "look for the open man" since the 1950s!

This year the big deal was evaluating defensive performance through exhaustive video breakdown but in the end we learned that Chris Paul is the best defensive point guard and Kawhi Leonard, the best defensive forward, two things we already knew! Analytics mostly confirm what an excellent scout could already tell you about a player or a performance. It's probably fairer to the player to be judged on more precise, mathematical criteria but players like Hassan Whiteside can still slip through the cracks in the evaluation system. Analytics can increase the awareness and appreciation of a defensive rim protector like Rudy Gobert who has improved the Utah Jazz's defense immensely with his increased playing time. Too bad analytics weren't around in Bill Russell's era because he would have been off the charts in all the defensive intangibles!

Two interesting stats can symbolize the analytics movement today. Atlanta's Kyle Korver is the NBA's best three-point shooter and 95 percent of his threes come off assists. In general, twice as many assists are given on three- point shots compared to two-point shots. Since three-pointers are worth 50 percent more, it's obvious that teams today have a vested interest in filling their rosters with good longe-range shooters and creative ball-movers and passers!

The state-of-the-art in individual player performance in the NBA today is the PER (Player Efficiency Rating) - invented by John Hollinger, analytics expert for the Memphis Grizzlies - which is an even more in-depth version of what we call player evaluation in Europe. To simplify, you subtract the negative stats from the positive ones to arrive at a number. This enables us to take into account a lot more parameters than in the past. Things like fouls drawn and shooting percentages. When I compare this to my early days as a pro in France in the 1970s and 1980s when points scored was about the only thing anyone cared about, I say to myself we've come a long way since then!

One last point: analytics are also very fashionable because in this age of internet, video games, fantasy leagues and social media, all this data feeds the needs of the media machine and gives us plenty to talk, write and debate about!

George Eddy

FIBA

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