One of the biggest obstacles I face in the light of server downtime is the obvious out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality that emerges from time to time, when it comes to the pursuit of trying to write on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s on account of knowing there’s nowhere to post to, however there are the times in which I simply don’t either have the time or the simple drive to write anything.
At the time I’m writing this, I realized that in a hypothetical online status, I’d have gone four days without taking the time to write something, which I would have chastised myself for being unacceptable. Usually, I like to write to what I like to call, more organically, which is to say things that are happening fairly current to the particular day, and I write immediately after finding something that piques my interest.
Failing that, there’s the well of topics that I notate in a Gmail draft, or a Notes file on my phone, that I feel like I can dip into from time to time in order to have something to write about, when current events seem dry. This post, is one of them.
I came across this article written by Michael Wilbon, a sportswriter I’ve typically been supportive of, from his time at the Washington Post, as well as being the less-insufferable voice of Pardon The Interruption. Long story short, it’s an article about how African-Americans aren’t into statistics as it pertains to professional sports as much as others are.
First of all, I didn’t even know what The Undefeated was, until after I read this article. After a little bit of research, I deduced that it’s the “Black Grantland,” that was a contributor to the death of “regular Grantland (which had several black authors)” that was initially helmed by noted race-card wielder, Jason Whitlock.
From my own sniffing around the site, it’s got some intriguing content, but just everything goes back towards race at a rate that makes me feel like the site’s overall agenda is just a little too prevalent for my own enjoyment. The fact that it’s backed by ESPN, an entity that I can never criticize enough for being as spineless and crooked in its own right goes to show just how much pandering they’re willing to do in order to generate web traffic.
And although I’m okay with Wilbon, even I’ll admit a little bit of surprise to see just how much he talks about race in his articles about statistics, in spite of the fact that what I thought was cool about him was the fact that he was a prevalent black voice that actually knew his stuff about sports, without having to constantly resort to the race card.
But getting to the article that spawned this post (finally), I will say it is a little interesting to read about this perspective. Being the fan of baseball that I am, I’ve witnessed the rise and growth of the statistical movement as much as any other stat geek out there, and although it’s most prevalent in baseball, I’ve not been blind to the fact that “new-age” statistics and analysis have been sprouting in other sports, like basketball, football and soccer; regardless of the fact that baseball is the perfect sport that encourages statistical, event-based analysis, whereas it’s a little more difficult in other sports, most notably due to the presence of clocks.
Player Efficiency Ratings (PER), 40-yard dash times, pedometers on players; there have been a large variety of new measuring sticks that are emerging in all sports, that with enough data, aspire to paint cleaner and clearer pictures about predicting the future or explaining the past. Some statistics are more useful than others, and some admittedly seem invented just to make cherry-picked players seem way more valuable than they probably are.
The bottom line is that statistics exist because professional sports organizations are often trying to get tangible data to justify making the decisions they make for the good of their teams. Decisions that have repercussions in the value of millions of dollars, whether it’s the cost of a free agent, or the profits that could be made due to increased interest as a result of a signing.
Statistics is knowledge. Knowledge is power.
Ignoring analysis is ignoring knowledge, and ignoring knowledge is dumb.
And according to Wilbon, black people widely do not bother accepting statistics. There’s no clear-cut answer to why this is, as a variety of reasons are cited, from age, ambivalence, ignorance or simply a difference of philosophy, but the bottom line is that there are vastly fewer African-American eyes looking at statistics than everyone else.
In all fairness, Wilbon’s article is heavily anchored to the NBA, the sport in which the newer statistics are pretty useless and convoluted. Seriously, hypothetical shit like “points per 100 possessions” is pretty stupid, because no team in their right mind would give Seth Curry 100 possessions when they could be giving them to his brother Stephen Curry. But there is something tangible in observational analysis that guys defended by Shane Battier are consistently performing below their averages, and that kind of knowledge is potentially tremendously useful whenever Battier was tasked with guarding Kobe Bryant in the past.
Honestly, I see the concerns Wilbon addresses with this trend, notably pointing out the sensitive line that divides the notion that black players play with more emotion and feel than being cerebral and intellectually, and the correlation between performance and intelligence. Frankly, some players can get away with not needing to be as cerebral, because they’re that physically gifted, but I would also argue that physically gifted players armed with knowledge would be like giving a trained professional their favorite tool.
However, I groan and roll my eyes when the topic turns towards employment in sports, because then it gets a little too Affirmative Action-ey. Sure, sports organizations might be good old boy clubs, full of greedy white men, but the roles that are being discussed, from GMs, coaches and managers, these are frankly roles in which highly analytical and those willing to look at numbers and statistics are typically the most effective. Writing 1,500 words about how black people don’t like statistics, and then bemoaning occupations that rely heavily on statistics for not having enough black people is pretty pointless.
Ultimately, I think the premise of the article is interesting, but being a part of a racially-driven, sort of race-baiting sub site, it’s inevitable that it also unfortunately follows the format. Frankly, I think Wilbon is better than this, but there’s no denying that black people don’t utilize statistics and analysis as frequently as others do. It’s like free power they’re turning down.
Also, it doesn’t take a genius to know that Dwight Howard is a clubhouse cancer, and that anyone who actually pays him anything to sign him, is wasting their money, analysis or statistics be damned.
