When I was growing up we had great stats.

Now, I mean true shooting percentage.

I don't know what that is. Thinking basketball podcast, my name is Ben.

Welcome today.

Today is a conversation I wanted to have for a long time.

What's better? The eye test or analytics, watching film or using stats.

I think that those things are a false dichotomy. I don't believe that those things are

really separate and we'll talk about that in today's episode. But you know if I had a if I had a mission statement for this

podcast for really any of the work I do in basketball it's to bridge this idea

that there's an eye test way to watch the game and there's a stats way to watch the

game that people either use data or they scout a lot of film. Because really

these things go hand in hand. I talked about this with

Nate Duncan on his wonderful dunked on podcast earlier in the year.

The idea that you would watch film and not measure stuff that happens on the film that you're watching,

or only use data but not understand what the data applies to, is really a false dichotomy.

It's really a poor practice.

Those things live together fundamentally.

When you want to say figure out, oh, you know, who's the best ice pick and roll defensive duo in the

league or something like that something very hardcore X is and O's ice coverage is a kind of pick and roll coverage, you would still want to measure that and understand what you're looking at.

You would not be able to remember hundreds of players playing ice coverage over thousands of

possessions and accurately figure out who's the best and who struggles.

I talk about this in thinking basketball. These tasks are just not made for any

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