Description
Book SynopsisNumbers Don't Lie gives readers a multilayered understanding of basketball analytics on its own terms, describes the historical and contemporary conditions in basketball culture, science, and society that have facilitated the rise of basketball analytics, and shows the varying impact of basketball analytics.
Trade Review"Colás, an independent researcher and former University of Michigan instructor, has authored a fascinating history of the development of statistics keeping in the sport of basketball. . . . The author effectively interweaves personal vignettes with his historical account of how big data has transformed the sport of basketball."—L. Kong,
Choice“Big data is revolutionizing the analysis and management of professional sport. In this important book Colás demolishes the misconception that our data is independent of our value judgments and challenges us to think about what it is we are really doing with data. Every data analyst working for a sports team, every writer or broadcaster who brandishes some statistic, everyone who thinks they know data, and anyone who trusts others to tell them what the data means needs to read this book. It will open your eyes.”—Stefan Szymanski, author of
Money and Soccer: A Soccernomics Guide“Yago Colás elucidates a dense observation that Charles Barkley once spat about how the proliferation of quantification in a game that was first tallied only by a soccer ball tossed through a peach basket in small-town Massachusetts has become as much a disclosure about race and culture in America as narratives written and uttered about the players who score, rebound, and assist. This is recommended reading for further understanding the complexity of sport and culture.”—Kevin Blackistone, ESPN panelist, University of Maryland journalism professor, and
Washington Post columnist
“If you enjoy any team sport,
Numbers Don’t Lie will take you on a journey of discovery unlike any you’ve been on before. You will finish with a deeper understanding of the person and player, the statistics that are relevant, the context they relate to, and you will begin to see the things that really matter in the game of basketball. Be prepared: you will never look at the game of basketball in the same way again.”—Fergus Connolly, coauthor of
The Process: The Methodology, Philosophy, and Principles of Coaching Winning Teams“A profoundly compelling and convincing analysis,
Numbers Don’t Lie offers a vivid combination of cultural dissection, social explication, personal narrative, technological exposé, and existential contemplation. Through this heady synthesis Yago Colás meticulously unpacks the ‘science of moving dots’ through which basketball has come to be administered, controlled, understood, and experienced. In doing so he adds significantly to his unique basketball oeuvre and confirms his position as the leading scholar of the game.”—David L. Andrews, author of
The Routledge Handbook of Physical Cultural StudiesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Two Baskets
Introductory Interlude—Records
Part 1. Counting
1. The Science of Moving Dots
Interlude—Rulers
2. The Culture of Moving Dots
Interlude—Numbers
3. Counting, America’s Game
Interlude—Thermometers
4. Counting America’s Bodies
Interlude—My Basketball Soul
5. Counting for Character
Interlude—One on One
6. Counting for Competition
Interlude—Measuring Sticks
7. Counting for Commerce in College Basketball
Interlude—Magic
8. Counting for Commerce in the NBA
Interlude—Basketball Jesus
9. The Work of Moving Dots
Part 2. What Counts
10. Approaching Basketball Experience
11. The Ethics of Understanding Basketball
Interlude—Basketball Supernatural
12. Feeling Basketball
13. Counting What Counts in Basketball
Coda: When Counting Counts
Notes
Bibliography
Index
