New Lakers liaison to help coaches and analytics group communicate
Los Angeles Lakers head coach Byron Scott does not like advanced analytics. The 54-year-old has made this stance abundantly clear, whether via his belief that his team should shoot a comically low number of three-pointers or his less direct, verifiably old-school analogies about foxhole scenarios and the like. Yet Scott’s aversion to the cutting edge (or even current standard) of statistical analysis has also come to represent the approach of the Lakers as a franchise. They have been well behind the rest of the NBA in embracing analytically derived trends and reportedly had little substantive analysis to show LaMarcus Aldridge when they met with the in-demand free agent.
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It appears that the franchise is taking at least one small step to correct the situation. As reported by Bill Oram of the Orange County Register (via Silver Screen & Roll), the Lakers have created a new position to facilitate communication between their analytics department and the coaching staff:
Assistant coach and advance scout Clay Moser is expected to transition from the bench to the front office in a sort of liaison position, which previously did not exist within the organization. A team spokesman confirmed Monday that the move is in the works.
The responsibilities of the role have been among those heaped upon assistant coach Mark Madsen. The plan with Moser, however, is to facilitate a pipeline of ideas with a basketball person in the front office. […]
Team officials felt that statistical analysis got lost in translation between the two branches of the organization, with statistics employees sometimes failing to understand the practical complications of making certain adjustments based on numbers, and the coaches not appreciating the value of the stats. […]
Madsen provided Scott with a weekly breakdown of advanced statistics, but in the middle of last season Scott said those numbers had never influenced a basketball decision. […]
The disconnect became apparent in February when Mitch Kupchak told KSPN/710 that analytics are “of most use to a coaching staff.” Scott, however, said he had no use for them.
As our Kelly Dwyer several months ago, it’s possible that the Lakers’ analytics crew is cranking out cutting-edge work that never sees any sort of application due to Scott’s intransigence. Given that Madsen’s explanations of his statistical approach were elementary at best, the creation of a new role should make it easier to communicate quality information to Scott and his staff. If Moser only focuses on understanding this data and explaining it in a way that more closely aligns with Scott’s beliefs, then it’s a good move.
The potential problem here is that Moser has been singled out as a liaison between the two sides, which could influence Scott’s willingness to listen to him before he presents any reports at all. Yes, Scott is much more likely to heed the advice of someone with old-school credentials as a scout and assistant, but he has also proven to be so dogmatically against advanced analytics that it’s hard to imagine him paying any attention to these findings. Unless Moser proves to be a genius at molding the work of Lakers analysts into Scott’s preferred vernacular and making it seem an old-school type came up with the idea, what evidence do we have that the head coach wants any input from this source?
A liaison between two departments can only succeed if both sides have interest in working together despite some disagreements. The available evidence suggests that Scott doesn’t want to. Can one new employee really transcend that divide?
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
