by Charlie O. Mallonee

The Sacramento Kings have terminated the services of Dean Oliver. Who you say? Dean Oliver – the director of player personnel and analytics. Is that a big deal you ask? Yes, it is a big deal.

Dean Oliver is the inventor of APBRmetrics – a statistical method of tracking players, devising game plans and selecting personnel for professional basketball teams. Dean Oliver is to basketball what statistician Bill James (sabermetrics) is to baseball. Oliver puts a mathematical value on all elements of the game to determine what areas of the game are more important than others. For example, is a quick 3-point shot more important than working the ball to the basket for a higher percentage shot?

APBRmetrics attempts to remove the intangibles from the game of basketball. Its goal is to quantify the game and make logical decisions based on solid statistics.

Billy Bean and the Oakland Athletics have famously used Sabemetrics as their guide to help them find success as a “small-market baseball club”.

Former Kings general manager Pete D’Alessandro recruited Oliver to leave the Denver Nuggets and come to Sacramento. Kings majority owner Vivek Ranadive fully supported the hiring of Oliver as a part of his NBA 3.0 initiative. Oliver represents the new 21st Century decision making process.

Oliver was working with the Nuggets when George Karl was the coach in Denver.

D’Alessandro, former advisor Chris Mullin and now Oliver are all gone from the Kings front office. Vlade Divac is now the man in charge and its not good to have been associated with D’Alessandro regime.

There have been reports that Divac has little or no use for analytics preferring to use a more traditional approach to selecting players, game planning and game management. The only problem with that approach is that the NBA is becoming a league driven by analytics.

Every arena is equipped with special cameras to capture the key elements of APBRmetrics so statisticians can review the plays and break the game down into many different elements. The fact is the game can be quantified and teams are gathering that information to make plans to defeat their rivals. Analytics is only going to grow in its importance to NBA teams in the future.

Sacramento had the man who invented the science on their staff, and they just fired him. It is like firing the Wright Brothers as your airplane builders to go with an individual who has never built more than a paper airlplane. The move just does not make any sense.

There are two very prominent NBA teams that do not rely on analytics – the Los Angeles Lakers and the New York Knicks. How well is that working out for those teams?

The world is changing. There will always be a place for evaluating love for the game, motivation and hustle. There is also going to be a place for solid analytics that show what moves are valuable and what moves do not contribute to putting wins up on the board.

Divac is trying to build up his own executive team. Rumors have Peja Stojakovic and Bobby Jackson taking jobs in the Kings front office. It is always good to have trusted teammates on the front line with you, but the Kings also need new, highly trained warriors to help lead them out of the “valley of despair” into land of the playoffs.

Bottom line – letting Dean Oliver walk was not a good basketball move, and it only creates an increasing vision of chaos when it comes to the Kings management team.