 |
 |
"Ball." |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
We've still got some time to kill before things get interesting in the NBA, so I'm starting a new series of indeterminate length where I proclaim what changes I would make if I ran the NBA. Being an online guy, I want to start with an upgrade I would make to NBA.com. As most of you have undoubtedly surmised, I'm kind of an NBA stats geek. I don't live and die by stats as absolute measures of players and teams, but they're certainly useful tools. But you know what's not useful? NBA.com's statistics section, which flat-out sucks. First of all, it's not intuitive or user-friendly. But more importantly, it doesn't have any of the cool advanced stats like True Shooting Percentage and Net48 I can get from basketball-reference.com or 82games.com. I know what some of you are thinking: Most fans don't care about advanced stats so why bother with that complicated junk? To which I respond: Is that any way to run a business? I've managed an online sports channel with over a half-million unique visitors per week so I know from first-hand experience that sports fans love stats and the more you give them, the more pages they'll click through. And more pageviews means more ad revenue. With this in mind, I would hire some of the guys behind Basketball Reference and 82games to beef up and improve the overall experience of the NBA.com stats section. I know for a fact that the NBA already collects the raw data they need for this. They just need to package that data in a pleasing way for all us fantasy basketball freaks and hoops stat geeks that currently look elsewhere for our fix. To give credit where it's due, I have to give the NBA props for its cool and useful NBA Hot Spots page that allows you to see every player's shooting percentage from 14 different offensive zones. It would be a lot cooler if I could link directly to a particular player's Hot Spots so that I could easily show you how ridiculously wet Steve Nash's shot is from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, but I don't want to quibble. Because I'm a benevolent NBA commissioner who wants to receive suggestions from his lowly customers, tell me what you would like me to do to improve NBA.com. Just to get this out of the way, cheerleader nudie shots are not happening so don't ask. Pictures of Glen "Big Baby" Davis in a Speedo? Now, that could be arranged. |
 |
