I'm a numbers guy. I love math. Since I've been working in the programming field for 7 years now, I've also developed an appreciation for logging and reporting. Lately, I can't get my mind off of how I could use this to benefit a basketball team. I know that there are websites already that do advanced stats, but I'd like to go even further than that.

There is a lot of information you can gather from a box score, but it surely isn't enough to tell you how a game was played. Play by Play accounts also provide some information that can help a person understand how the game went. Even if you put them together though, you still barely know much about how the game went. The best place to go when you want to know how a game went, is to the video archives. However, even though that's the best, I honestly don't think it's complete either.

I'm thinking of trying to develop a system that will log every action of an NBA game so that it's quantifiable and easy to report. Not only that, in your report, you'd have the ability to see that actual play. Let me see if I can explain it properly.

In the most recent game against the Bobcats, MFSC stated how Knight was one of the key components to winning the game. Needless to say, he ended up having a crappy game. In the game he had three turnovers, but one or two of them were personal fouls. Regardless of that, I honestly thought that the rather than the key issue being for Knight to light them up offensively, I was concerned by how good Kemba Walker was at stealing the ball and how often it looks like Knight doesn't have control over it. He's 7th in the league in total steals at just under 2 a game. Sessions is tied for 103rd on the list. Brandon Knight is 8th in the league in total turnovers (REALLY surprised at who is ahead of him on that list). So, how would my system help in any way.

Currently, the league keeps certain stats. Each team may keep their own stats (TOV from a bad pass, from an offensive foul, number of charges drawn/made, etc.). But can they run a report on them against a player/team? If I wanted to see how well Brandon Knight fared against Charlotte, I could probably find a site out there that already does that. But can they break that game down into players faced at the time of each action. You look at the box score of that game, Kemba had 2 steals, Knight had 4 turnovers. However, how many of those steals were Knight's turnovers. Oh, well you can look at the play by play and figure that one out. But could you imagine having to do this over 10 games? How about if you want to see how the player fared against right vs. left handed defenders? How about when they're dribbling up the court vs. running and offensive play? And the other thing I'd like to add to it is video.

Yes, you can look at play by play, find out when something happened, but then you'd have to go and get the video, find that spot and watch the play. But it'd be nice if this was a simple software program that all you had to do was click on a link. Or, what about an action play that the player wasn't involved in? Say you wanted to see how many times the player didn't get a rebound and they were within three feet of where the rebound was caromed. You could see how many "missed" rebound opportunities there were and show video (to the player and/or coach) of what they could have done. You could also see the number of times a player was was on defense and was beat to his right, to his left, with or without a pick being set, etc.

QUANTIFY AND REPORT!!!!!!!!!!!

But I've never been a coach of any kind. I've only ever played sports and I barely did that. So how valuable could this information be? I'm thinking only college and/or pro would utilize this, and it would take a LOT of video analyzing. Would it be worth it? Would it provide much, if any, help in teach a player their mistakes or how to take better advantage of a play?

P.S. (no, not you -PS-): This is a lot of bored talking, so I apologize. If this is something that could help any team at any level, I may pursue it for a job with a team.