A FEW weeks ago I wrote a column about sportswriter Allan Barra and his devotion to statistics. He has just sent in a response:
When one evaluates athletes and teams for a living (such as it is) one is used to being occasionally misunderstood, misquoted, and maligned. But a certain Jonathan V. Last hit new lows in all three.
Last attributes all manner of opinion to me that in fact resembles nothing at all I’ve ever written, spoken, or thought. For instance, he claims that I called Andre Miller “the third best player in the National Basketball Association.” I did nothing of the sort. He claims further that “Barra places his faith in his Hoops Grading System alone,” which is his evaluation, not mine. He also castigates me for picking Karl Malone 3rd among MVP candidates, David Robinson 5th and John Stockton 9th. I did nothing of the sort.
He also claims that I called Hakeem Olajuwon “The best player in NBA history.” What I did say and have said is that Olajuwon is one of the greatest all-around players in NBA history and one of the most overlooked. And I ask what sensible basketball fan would argue to the contrary?
Last takes me to task for what strikes me as being a quite moderate and perfectly credo [sic], namely “If you are doing something to make your team win you are leaving a paper trail to reveal it.” For some reason, Last calls this “quite insane” for the reason that all of my overlooked All-Star candidates, with the exception of Marcus Camby, played for cellar-dwelling teams. But Last never tells us why a great player can’t get stuck on a cellar-dwelling team, which is particularly strange in light of his own argument that Michael Jordan should be this year’s MVP because he has turned Washington “into a winner.” Well, we’ll see exactly how much of a winner Jordan turns the Wizards into, but if the Wizards tumble to next to last, would Last assume that Jordan’s individual contributions were any less impressive? I don’t think so.
I devote a great deal of my time to putting together statistical methods of evaluating performance in professional sports–methods, I might add, based on correlations with winning. I devote at least as much time explaining to readers that such methods are not substitutions for human intelligence. They are tools to increase our knowledge, not to stand in as substitutes for. Last doesn’t seem to understand this. He claims that “excellence in sports is about more than numbers. It’s about subtleties, like drawing double teams, and intangibles like leadership.” Well, whoever said that sports weren’t about these things? Certainly not me. What I did say and do maintain is that the players good enough to establish their leadership or draw double teams are invariably going to leave some kind of statistical trail. They’re either going to pass or run or hit or field or something better than most other players around them.
The study of statistics in sports is the study of objectivity. No matter how rabid a sports fan you are, you can’t see but a tiny fraction of the games that are played. If you can’t place a certain amount of reliance on statistics for the 99.999 percent of the games you don’t see, then what are we to rely on? Perhaps we are all supposed to rely on the judgments of a few high priests like Last, to whom “intangibles” are not something that is in the eye of the beholder, but an objective truth beamed down directly to his eyes from God’s own.
Last bemoans the fact that objective evidence simply does not say the things he would wish it to say. “I could go on and on and on,” he goes on, “about how HGS favors big men because it places so much emphasis on shooting percentages and blocked shots.” Well, I’m sorry that we don’t live in a world where guys who are 5’7″ can compete on a basketball court with the likes of Shaquille O’Neal. I’m also sorry that I don’t look in the mirror every morning and see George Clooney staring back at me, but our adjustment to the real world is something that both Last and myself are just going to have to learn to live with.
I’m not trying to “demystify” sports as Last seems to think I am. I don’t know any first rate sports analyst who doesn’t increase a fan’s interest in sports. But what I am trying to do is give all fans everywhere access to methods and information that will free them from having to listen to the Jonathan Lasts of the world who would insist “It’s so because I say it’s so.”Allen Barra Wall Street Journal
In response, I should probably just quote Barra’s Journal column from last Friday, where he assured his readers that the Rams would win the Super Bowl. It’s not fair to beat up on Barra because he picked the wrong team–I sure didn’t pick the Patties (no one I know did except for Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, and Christopher Caldwell). But it’s instructive to see how fetishizing statistics can lead one astray:
“Sifting through statistics carefully, there’s usually some reason for hope for the underdog–some reason to believe that if Scenario A, however unlikely, were to occur, it might aid Scenario B, which might increase the possibility that a tipped football or a blocked punt could turn a game around.
“But I’ve sifted through every conceivable statistic, and even if the New England Patriots could get every possible break their way, the St. Louis Rams are still going to kick the stuffing out of them on Sunday.”
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
