Charles Barkley Doesn’t Like Analytics, Even Though They Love Him
It’s no secret that Charles Barkley understands basketball better than he understands just about anything else. But the former NBA All Star turned ace analyst accidentally smeared his own basketball accomplishments with his recent rant against analytics.
“First of all I’ve always believed analytics was crap,’’ Barkley said Tuesday night, following the Rockets’ win over the Suns. “The NBA is about talent. All these guys who run these organizations who talk about analytics, they have one thing in common: they’re a bunch of guys who have never played the game, and they never got the girls in high school, and they just want to get in the game.’’
Chuck’s rant is classic jocks vs. nerds material, but he’s wrong to think analytics are a new phenomenon in the NBA. He doesn’t realize that when he was affectionately dubbed “The Round Mound of Rebound’’ that he was being revered for analytical reasons.
A simple Google search will tell you analytics is “the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics.’’ Rebounds are statistics, as are points, assists, steals, and field goal percentage.
When Barkley gets riled up over Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s use of analytics and says that the Rockets aren’t championship contenders because they do so, it implies that Barkley’s own career was overrated because he never won a championship.
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Barkley was a valuable player because he filled up the box score night in and night out. 23,757 points on 54% shooting, coupled with 12,546 rebounds over his career make him one of the best power forwards in history. The Player Efficiency Rating (PER) analytic that Barkley hates so much ranks him as the 11th best player in NBA history.
Keith Olbermann rebutted all of Barkley’s claims on his show on ESPN. Olbermann piles on Barkley and repeatedly calls him an idiot. That’s not completely accurate. The reaction on Twitter has been similar in nature.
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Barkley knows basketball. He knows what talent looks like, and he knew how to play in his day. What he doesn’t know is that he should be championing analytics. Analytics validate Barkley’s greatness despite the fact that he was never on a championship team (in comical news, Bill Russell is ranked 96th all-time in PER).
Analytics are the reason why Barkley is in the Hall of Fame, and 7-time NBA champion Robert Horry is not. Barkley is correct that analytics don’t tell the whole story, but to dismiss them altogether shows a lack of understanding of what analytics are.
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