Nerds and Winners: Recent Episodes
Matthew J Brown
Championship teams in the modern era are built with front offices full of nerds doing data analysis and rosters full of winners. Both are required. Winners can learn a lot from the nerds, and nerds need to appreciate winners. I am Matthew J Brown, an expert on data analysis and an enthusiastic sports fan. Follow me @NerdsandWinners on twitter and tell me what you think. Nerds and Winners Unite!
Parity is great for the NFL, but the NBA is about dynasties, great teams, and great players.
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Four equally matched teams, two game sevens, and two humiliating blow-outs. The explanation was all in the coaching.
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I take a snapshot view of where MLB statistics are trending so far this season.
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Luka Doncic and Ja Morant are both great players, but Luka needs to find teammates he trusts and either Ja or the rest of the Grizzlies need to change their style of play.
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Ratings for this year’s NBA playoffs are up quite a bit and I think there is a lot to learn from that.
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The data scientists in MLB front offices are terrible at data science.
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My rant about the horrible people who officiate professional sports and worse, their bosses in the league offices.
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Joe Douglas has presided over teams with a 13-36 record. 12-27 for the teams he personally assembled. Can we wait for a winning season before canonizing him the Patron Saint of the Jets please?
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The Milwaukee Bucks analyzed the modern day NBA offense that has been derived from data analysis and developed an excellent defensive plan based off the same data.
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We look at a few recent trades and apply Jimmy Johnson’s chart to evaluate them.
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If your favorite team trades up or down in the draft tonight then you need to listen to this episode in order to judge the wisdom of the trade.
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My third and final (for now) episode on the importance of the coach / manager.
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Power hungry front offices will try to convince you that managers don’t matter. Buck Showalter is proving them wrong.
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You cannot win a championship without great players no matter how great your coach is, but no matter how great your players are they need to be coached if you want to win.
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This is the ultimate conclusion of the two Money Ball episodes from earlier in the week. I use real data to prove that the analytics departments in baseball are horrible at data science.
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How in the world can Steph Curry be a better defensive player statistically than allay Thompson?
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Self reinforcing forces are creating an echo chamber that Major League Baseball can’t seem to escape. It is data science at its worst.
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Necessity is the mother of invention and when Sandy Alderson was ordered to slash payroll in 1995 money ball was invented.
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Kyrie is a rebel without a cause. So what? The issue is coach-ability and they both fail on that count.
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The real NBA season has just begun and good things are happening with the New Orleans Pelicans.
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Today I discuss the logical consequences of starting pitchers pitching less innings.
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The Cy Young award is named after Cy Young BECAUSE he has the all time record for most wins. It’s not called the ERA award or the Pedro Martinez Award-at least not yet.
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The ambition of enthusiastic data scientists is leading to solutions that are far more complex than need be.
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The curious case of Bryson DeChambeau.
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A tutorial on exit velocity, launch angle, and swing path.
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Sorry for the rant, but there was a perfect storm of New York Knicks insanity yesterday and I couldn’t let it go.
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Lebron James is the second best player of all time and The Godfather of player empowerment. How is that working out for him and his followers?
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The old fashioned, objective statistics have obvious flaws, but the attempts to improve upon them with advanced measurements are much worse.
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A history lesson of the origins of Sabermetrics which are the origins of all sports data analysis.
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If you think Mike Trout is good then wait until you see Seiya Suzuki!
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Today we talk about the importance of diversification in building a championship team.
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Today we celebrate the millionaires who play for the love of the game.
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I bet you don’t even know the name of the coach who should be this season’s Coach of the Year.
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Jason Kidd and Luka Doncic seem to be on the right track. Kidd was fascinating statistically as a player, and hasn’t been boring as a coach either.
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The propaganda inspired narratives are all around us, but the real stories should be obvious.
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I showcase the late and great Professor Richard Feynman. You can learn far more about the scientific method from him than anyone in the media today.
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Lebron James has defeated me at a game of 3D Chess I didn’t even know we were playing.
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I explain the thought process of a Yankees fan, and rant against best buddies Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman.
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As a Jet fan I need to thank the Bengals for giving me hope, and the Cleveland Browns for reassuring me that the grass is greener on our side of the fence.
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I use an article written by a data scientist about the NBA Player Efficiency Rating to illustrate how the modern embrace of data mining can be dangerous.
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I reference a famous academic paper from 1995 that lays out the pitfalls of researcher bias when there is too much data available and the data scientist is unaware of the multiple comparison problem.
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If you are a sports gambler then you NEED to listen to this episode. You will learn all you need to know about forecasting this year’s NBA MVP.
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Whether it be youth trainers obsessing over technique to justify their fees or front office data analysts justifying their existence, thought processes counterproductive to team success are being implanted in athletes’ brains.
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Over training young athletes is ruining golf and baseball.
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Now that the MLB lockout is over, let’s put an end to the fictional narrative Rob Manfred started 7 years ago to gain leverage in the negotiation he just won.
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Yesterday’s deals in the NFL illustrate the dilemma all teams face when negotiating with their quarterback.
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Are the nerds in the front office mucking up their analysis or are statistics vital to evaluating players?
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The New York Knicks are an example of a nerd challenged front office and the failure that creates. A team built in the image of their fan base.
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While the MLB owners are busy pinching pennies, the NBA owners are going for broke.
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Today’s women athletes behave like the old school male athletes of yesteryear. Male athletes from today could learn a lot from their female peers.
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The numbers are in and this debate is over. Or so it should be. But it will never end. I give you all of the data you need to decide for yourself.
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We’ll make the big comparison tomorrow, but listen in today so you are an expert on the numbers I’ll be using to end the debate once and for all.
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Big data delivers every story, video, show and podcast you read, watch, and listen to. Never forget that.
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This is what happens when the lawyer becomes the client. Rob Manfred started this negotiation the day he was hired in 2015. Now the trust is broken and it will be we the fans who will be locked out.
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He’s already put up historic numbers. Now we have Joel Embiid leading the league in scoring even though he missed 2 full seasons from a foot injury. Zion will be back!
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A re-play of Feb 2 episode, “Memorize This One Sentence”
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Which threesome will play more games together, Harden-Durant-Irving or Simmons-Durant-Irving?
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Do you hate referees and umpires? If you do then listen to my rant about them and learn about the “Company Man” referee in the NBA.
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The success of the triangle offense wasn’t the scheme itself, it was the systematic nature of the scheme.
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I discuss “Boltzmann Brains” and the “Big Brain Theory” to explain why professional sports data analysts shouldn’t get away with saying their models work over the long term only.
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There is nothing new under the sun, but thanks to modern day media Juwan Howard will be held as accountable as Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight should have been.
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I may be the only person who thinks leaving Miami was his biggest mistake, but it is why his resume is missing a true dynasty.
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A new Sunday edition when I will re-play foundational episodes that describe important statistical concepts. Today I re-play “George Soros Hall of Famer”.
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I enjoy my “told you so” moment about the Mahomes meltdown and explain why I think Aaron Rodgers fails in the playoffs.
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I hypothesize that we the fans are running our teams. I try to falsify the hypothesis before arriving at an informed opinion.
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If you hate the 3 point shot then you must not understand why it has proliferated in the NBA the way it has. Listen and learn the statistics behind the strategy.
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What can an Ancient Greek Mathematician teach us about sports analytics? Listen to find out.
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Ben Simmons for James Harden. Epic deal. Who won the trade? Will that team win the playoff series that seems destined to happen?
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This Super Bowl was the fitting ending to this season. Close games that seem close by design. And Cooper Kupp of course.
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If you are an experienced gambler you should find these probabilities interesting and if you are a novice gambler you will learn why you should quit before you get hooked.
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He obviously needs to sustain his success to be the best NFL coach ever, but he is well on his way.
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Joe Burrow is already a historical figure. Who can we compare him to? What do those comparisons say about his future?
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Some dubious trades in the NBA yesterday leaves me wondering if the common ingredient in losing NBA franchises is no data analysts at all in their front offices.
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Do a lot of triple doubles make you a winner or a ball hog? Can you be both? Who the heck is Fat Lever?
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Joe Burrow probably saved Zach Taylor’s career. Makes we wonder about Brady doing the same for Belichick, and re-think what makes a coach special.
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I elaborate on the “Memorize This One Sentence” episode by discussing the use of correlation statistics to explain the past compared to using them to predict the future.
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Best career of all time? Probably. Best QB of all time? The numbers say NO.
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Let’s talk about the hypocrisy of “Tanking for Tua” and “The Process” and the sudden faux outrage over Miami’s tank job.
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One sentence to undermine every sports analytics theory.
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What do the New York Jets and Cincinnati Bengals have in common. A shred of hope for Jets fans everywhere.
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Some games are won by the winner, but some are lost by the losing team. In all of the excitement these last two weeks we got a little of both.
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Everyone wants to change the NFL overtime rules. Again. Let’s add some historical perspective to the debate.
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Let’s compare coaching styles!
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It’s about time we properly record the history of the steroid era in the baseball Hall of Fame.
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Learn about the Theory of Reflexivity which limits the predictive ability of statistical analysis in human endeavors.
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Patrick Mahomes, Ethan Hunt, and Michelle Wie. Somehow it all makes sense.
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A short description of what the Nerds and Winners podcast is all about.
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