The RPM Smell Test and the Utah Jazz

This week the basketball metrics community gave us another lens through which to analyze player performance. ESPN’s new Real Plus Minus (RPM) stat combines on-court plus/minus with absolute statistical contribution to give...

PickWatch 2014: The Home Stretch

Fourteen nights of NBA regular season action remain, meaning the rooting guide for the pickwatching Jazz crowd gets a lot simpler from here out. Of course, the rooting guide starts with the question of whether you’re...

The Linearization of Basketball

Is our desire to analyze leading us to oversimplify a complex game? If a=b and b=c, then a=c. That immutable truth your junior high math teacher taught you is unquestionable. It’s tidy. It’s neat. It’s linear. It’s easy...

They Said It: Telling Jazz Quotes

Going straight to the source for insights on the...

Franchise Four: Getting a Star in the 2014 Draft

  Wiggins. Parker. Embiid. Exum. Like it or not, this season is as much about those guys now as it is about Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors or Ty Corbin. Like it or not, the story from here revolves around whether Utah will...

The Difference a Screen Makes

Ready for a bold prediction? I think the most significant early advances in the realm of video tracking will have to do with helping us understand and quantify the value of setting and using screens properly. The NBA, more than...

Jazz Make No Moves at Trade Deadline

On an NBA trade deadline that mostly featured tank trades, salary dumps and cosmetic upgrades to a couple teams’ benches, the Utah Jazz again stood pat. Let’s dive in and look at what happened — and didn’t...

Trade Deadline Central: Around the Western Conference

Last updated 2/19/14 at 2:18 p.m. EDT. February 20 will be an interesting day, either because of breaking Jazz news or because of the lack of it. Either way, we’ll have a better sense in less than a week what the...

Trade Deadline Central: Around the Eastern Conference

Last updated 2/19/14 2:24 p.m. EDT. February 20 will be an interesting day, either because of breaking Jazz news or because of the lack of it. Either way, we’ll have a better sense in less than a week what the Jazz’s...

On the Basketball IQ of 21-Year-Olds

Basketball, it turns out, is complicated. I mean, there’s a more simplistic, linear way to approach it, but in the NBA, that route hardly ever makes you very good. Reaching a special level (see: San Antonio Spurs) requires...