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Daryl Morey was one of the leading influencers for the modern era of NBA analytics. He would also be the perfect candidate to help commissioner Adam Silver put the genie back in the bottle, similar to what Theo Epstein and Rob Manfred have done with MLB.
Morey was relieved of his duties as president of basketball operations for the 76ers earlier this week. As the co-founder of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 20 years ago and through his work in the 76ers and Rockets front offices, he has been at the vanguard of transforming how the sport has been played. The entire league is shooting three-pointers at exponentially higher levels than two decades ago and the game is now being played at a much faster pace.
While these and other changes certainly make basketball sense for the franchises deploying them, they have also posed aesthetic challenges and injury concerns for the league, making it less enjoyable to watch for many. Particularly in the regular season.
In many ways, the situation mirrors how MLB puzzles got solved after the popularity of Michael Lewis’s Money Ball book and movie showcasing how A’s general manager Billy Beane found statistical inefficiencies to help his team contend despite possessing a smaller budget.
In 2021, Manfred hired Epstein as a consultant to clean up the aesthetics of baseball. Epstein, a Yale graduate, had improbably led the Red Sox and Cubs to World Series championships with a heavy emphasis on analytics. Manfred’s decision to hire him was analogous to how casinos would hire blackjack cheats to identify holes in their systems.
“It’s Catch Me if You Can, Frank Abagnale,” Barstool Sports personality PFT Commenter said on Pardon My Take this week, in response to my idea of the NBA hiring Morey.
In 2023, MLB banned the shift and added the pitch clock, and saw improvements in gameplay and pace almost immediately. The average MLB game was 24 minutes shorter in the first season with the new pitch clock. TV ratings and attendance have been escalating for the sport.
The NBA has several issues that someone like Morey could look at tinkering. Load management has become a hot-button issue. A number of league observers believe this is symptomatic of the wear-and-tear that the increased pace of play is putting on players’ bodies. Tom Haberstroh, the Yahoo Sports reporter who has long covered the NBA from a statistical perspective, told Front Office Sports that there were 20,000 more possessions played this season than there were in the 2005-06 season—247,000 vs. 227,000.
“The most important point of all of this,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr told Haberstroh last year, “is the pace and space and how much more mileage that players are covering. You see all these injuries … I don’t think players get enough rest anymore.”
In the 1998 playoffs, teams averaged 85 possessions per 48 minutes. That number ballooned to 95 last postseason.
Another issue is the number of three-point shots. While it didn’t take an Ivy League math genius to realize that three points are worth more than two, the NBA has adopted a much more liberal approach to deep shots in recent years. As of last March, teams were averaging about 35 three-point attempts per game, a 50% increase versus a decade prior.
Figuring out the optimal number of three-point attempts per game, considering that the depth of players who can shoot them is greater than ever, and how to get there—whether that means moving the line back, and/or eliminating the corner three—is something Morey could certainly help with. So too is looking at how to disincentivize tanking, an issue Silver has been deliberating publicly in recent months.
Notably, the NBA league office might be hesitant to hire Morey, considering it has been seeking to rekindle its relationship with China. But there is no doubt that he would be an asset in figuring out ways to improve the game’s aesthetics.
