Moneyball meets NBA

[pstall]

Moneyball is a great book(soon to be movie) about Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's ability to use stats/data and other methods for finding players that give his team big bang for a little buck on a little payroll.

Now the NBA is catching on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all&pagewanted=all

In 2005, the Houston Rockets’ owner, Leslie Alexander, decided to hire new management for his losing team and went looking specifically for someone willing to rethink the game. “We now have all this data,” Alexander told me. “And we have computers that can analyze that data. And I wanted to use that data in a progressive way. When I hired Daryl, it was because I wanted somebody that was doing more than just looking at players in the normal way. I mean, I’m not even sure we’re playing the game the right way.”