New Study Identifies NBA Players Who Shoot Too Much

To reach the NBA Finals, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder needs to pass more, especially to his teammate Kevin Durant.  That would be the message that two researchers would send to Thunder coach, Scott Brooks, if given the chance.  Matt Goldman, a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, and Justin Rao, a research scientist at Yahoo Labs recently named Westbrook as the biggest ?chucker? in the NBA because of statistics showing that he shoots much more often than he should, while Durant is classified as an undershooter, whose team would benefit from him taking more chances.


While their statistical theory builds a case for how to achieve optimal efficiency on the court, they don?t explain why elite players make the in-game decisions that they do.  For that matter, what about the high school ball player or the weekend warrior at the gym; how do they make the decision to pass or shoot?  For that, Markus Raab and Joseph Johnson, both sport scientists, have some insights  from their research.


First, let?s do the numbers.  Goldman and Rao dug into the NBA stats archive to analyze over 400,000 team possessions over the last four seasons, 2006-2010, across the entire league.  In a paper and presentation at the recent MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, they presented a model that compares the difficulty of a shot taken in relation to the time remaining on the 24 second shot clock.  Then they compare this with a concept called ?allocative efficiency?, or the benefit of equally distributing the ball to any of the five players on the court and also ?dynamic efficiency?, or deciding whether to ?use? the possession by taking a shot or ?continuing? the possession by making a pass.  As the shot clock winds down, the marginal difficulty of a shot considered will need to rise or they risk getting no shot off before the 24 seconds expires, wasting the possession.

They found that most NBA  players are very efficient in their shot selection.  Surprisingly, several elite players are actually not shooting enough, according to their model.  Here is the list of all NBA players analyzed and their score, where a negative number (at the top of the list) represent overshooters.  Joining Westbrook at the top of the list were well-known names like Lamar Odom and Tracy McGrady.  Even bigger names like LeBron James, Ray Allen, Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Paul and Joe Johnson actually show up at the bottom of the list and may hurt their team with their unselfishness.


So, what goes on in these very well-paid athletic brains?  Are the trigger-happy players selfish, over-confident and in need of attention?  Markus Raab, professor at the German Sport University-Cologne, and Joseph Johnson, professor at Miami University of Ohio,  have spent the last ten years studying the decision-making processes of athletes in several different sports, but especially fast-paced games where quick decisions are critical.


Let?s imagine the Thunder point guard, Westbrook, bringing the ball up the floor.  He crosses the half court line and his decision making process kicks in.  The Raab/Johnson process first recognizes that perception of the situation is required before the player can generate all of the different options in his brain.  Just like a quarterback examining and identifying the defensive alignment as he breaks the huddle, the point guard in basketball has to visually process the scene in front of him.  From there, his brain, based on his vast memory of similar basketball experiences, begins to make a list of options.  These can be spatial options, like move the ball left, ahead or right, or functional options like pass or shoot.  


Through research with basketball and team handball players, the researchers found that the most effective strategy is to ?take the first? option that the player conceives as that is most often the ?correct? choice when analyzed later by experts.  Much like going with your first answer on a test, the more that you deliberate over other choices, the greater the chances that you?ll pick the wrong one.  

However, each player will have their own library of choices stored in their memory and this magical sorting of best options can be influenced by several unique variables.  

One of these pre-determined factors is a personality preference known as action vs. state orientation.  According to Raab, ?An action orientation is attributed to players if they concentrate on a specific goal and take risks, whereas a state orientation is attributed to players if they have non-task-relevant cognitions and reduce risk-taking behavior by considering more situative considerations and future behavioral consequences.?  In other words, someone who has an action mentality is more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, while a state oriented player is going to consider more options with more long-term outlook.


For this and similar experiments, Raab and Johnson showed first-person videos of many different basketball in-game scenarios to players of different skill levels and personality types, then froze the scene and asked them to make a quick decision of what to do next with the ball.  They recorded the decision and the time it took to make the decision.  They found that those players who have more of an action orientation, according to a personality test given prior to the drill, were more likely to shoot first and more quickly.  Clearly, Russell Westbrook must fall in this category.


Raab followed up this study with a similar one that measured the difference between intuition-based decisions and more cognitive, deliberate decisions.  A player who ?goes with his gut? was shown to make faster and more successful choices than one that over analyzes.  This may help explain the list of elite players who tend to pass more than shoot.  They have more experience and patience to rely on their intuitive feel for the game.  While Goldman and Rao may ask them to be more action oriented, these players have learned that they are often just one more pass away from a much higher percentage shot.


Certainly, this is the tip of the iceberg regarding the psyche of a player at any level.  There are many more variables, some fact-based (I?ve missed my last 5 shots, so I?m going to pass) while some are more emotional, (I don?t want my teammate to get all the glory.)  For now, Thunder fans can only hope that their point guard learns to share.


See also: Are Bank Shots Best In Basketball? and NBA Teams Win With Ethnic Diversity

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/80PercentMental/~3/YUG18yAROGI/new-study-identifies-nba-players-who.html

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Source: http://blog.sports-buynow.com/formula_one/20110901-051846-Documentary-Film-on-Senna

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Increases in CPI: Good or bad?

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Opportunities and What They Cost

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Workouts Have Gone Digital With TrainingPeaks.com

Gear Fisher, CEO of Peaksware

Along with everything else that is digital in our lives, our workouts are now captured in 0's and 1's.  Its not enough that we run, walk, bike or swim, we now have a need to capture data about our efforts so that we can benchmark, measure and improve our future performances.

Gear Fisher recognized this trend way back in 1999, before there were iPods, iPhones, Nike+ or wearable GPS.  He started his new Peaksware company with a simple website, which has now grown into TrainingPeaks.com, one of  the leading online exercise management tools.

I caught up with Gear, now CEO of Peaksware, recently to discuss this wave of digital sweat tracking and get his thoughts on the future of exercise.

Dan Peterson: There seems to be a data revolution going on in the fitness world, between
heart rate monitors, GPS, Nike+, and Web-based activity apps. How did we get
here and what's next on the horizon?

Gear Fisher: I think that?s very true, it?s been growing for 10 years, but really only the last 3 or 4
have we seen a major uptick in acceptance. When we started the company in 1999,
there were only a handful of companies with downloadable devices. What?s more, few
people knew what to do with the data. Today, with Garmin, Timex, iPhone and Android
apps, and the other big players, they?ve made it easier and easier to get the data off the
devices and into the cloud for analysis... and with amazing accuracy. Consumers now
expect a fitness device to be downloadable if they pay over $200.

With smartphones, its even easier to collect GPS data and get it to the cloud for storage, sharing and
analysis. In the future, it?ll get even easier, I would not be surprised to see implanted
sensors that monitor additional metrics like body temperature, hydration, hunger,
blood sugar, real-time aerodynamics.. in fact, its happening now! Tracking workouts,
monitoring nutrition, making fitness social, working with a coach, these are all key
components for an emerging market which is just now getting started. It?s gaining mass
market appeal and adoption because the big players like Nike are on-board too.
We?ve carved out a niche in the high-end endurance athlete and coach market, but
we?ll see the same approach trickle down to many other verticals. Like Formula 1 or
NASCAR, our customers are the early adopters of new ideas in managing fitness and
nutrition via the internet.

TrainingPeaks has really served as the test-bed for these new ideas. Some of these ideas are now starting to reach the mass market, just like the technology in the race car?s alternator makes its way to the production line a few years later. It?s an understatement to say that the fitness industry, and its broader umbrella, the health care industry, needs a major revamp, and we?re going to be part of that
revolution.

Dan: Professional coaches and elite athletes understand how to turn all of this
data into useful knowledge for performance improvement, but do you think the
weekend warriors are also ready and able to make sense of it?

Gear:  Yes, they are definitely eager and and interested. This is where we come in. Making
sense of data, using it as a motivator and to make decisions going forward. There are
a few books like Hunter Allen and Andy Coggan?s ?Training and Racing with a Power
Meter? that focus entirely on making sense of the data. We?ve worked hard at ?boiling
down? how a workout affected your physiology. This is the essence of Training Stress
Score (TSS). Providing a single, meaningful number for every workout that can be
compared and shared. But even without hard-core analysis, it?s fun to see a map of
your route and to replay and review what your output was like for a particular climb,
sprint or interval. There are a LOT of enhancements coming in the near future that
will continue to ?make sense of the data? and provide meaningful daily insight into your
workouts and nutrition.

Dan: Can personal fitness coaches play a role in turning this data into improvement
for the average athlete?

Gear: Absolutely! Coaches are particularly adept at not only analyzing the data, but
deciding how it affects training and making decisions as to how an athlete should adjust
their training based on the information. A coach is a ?data and motivation? professional.
Many age-groupers use coaches for the sheer benefit of time savings. There?s a lot
to learn, and a coach makes training time efficient and prevents mistakes. There is no
computer system that can provide you better results than working with a coach, in fact,
we often say the best way to use our software is with a coach.

Dan: What was the initial inspiration for Peaksware and its flagship product,
TrainingPeaks? How far have you come in meeting those initial goals?

Gear: In 1999, Joe and Dirk Friel asked me to build a web-based training log to replace their email/fax/paper system which they were using for their coaching company.
They had some early Filemaker Pro database tools, but it was clunky and nearly
impossible to get reliable and regular information back from clients. After I built the
initial web app, I proposed that we open up the systems to the public and start a
subscription business whereby athletes and coaches could use the same tools. That
started ?TrainingBible.com?. Essentially, it was an online version of Joe?s very popular
TrainingBible book series. We then realized that if we made the systems more agnostic,
any coach with any methodology could use it. From there, we grew organically and I
quit my job about 2 years later to begin working on the company full time.

Since then, it?s been pretty remarkable, we have 30 people now, over 10 different software products
across desktop, mobile and web, and we?re growing faster than ever. It was a ?right
time with the right product and right team? sort of moment, I?m lucky and proud to be
a part of it. It also feels like we?ve really just started. I often say that we are a 10 year
old start-up, because there is so much opportunity ahead and the industry is being
redefined continuously.

Dan: With so many sources of training data available to athletes, it seems
TrainingPeaks has positioned itself as the hub that can integrate all of these
different formats into a single repository. Is the training industry starting to agree
on some standards to make this easier?

Gear:  It is certainly core to our strategy to be the Switzerland of training data and training
methodology. We work with nearly all device manufacturers and even have as one of
our marketing slogans that we are the ?One Source? to monitor, analyze and plan your
fitness and nutrition. As for a data standard? Not really. There is some consolidation,
but every hardware vendor seems to want to do their own thing. I have seen some
pretty good usage of the ?.fit? binary file format that Dynastream (owned by Garmin) has
created and made available to the world. Even our own ?.pwx? format has become fairly
popular and adopted by a few other software and hardware products. However, we?re
really not close to a standard.

Where I do see some conformance is in how data is saved on devices. More and more devices are simply acting like mass storage devices that can plugin via USB to any computer, instead of using proprietary drivers and such for custom downloading. Even better are those that simply send the data to the cloud and make the data available via an API. Currently, we support over 25 different file
formats through our own API, and we routinely see data from over 90 devices, so there
is still a lot of legacy and fragmentation.

Dan: Will there someday be a single device we can wear that collects everything
and feeds coaching information back to us in real-time out on the road?

Gear: There already is! A few different iPhone/Android apps that focus on real-time data
collection are already available today. SRM, the German power meter company, does
a real-time data feed during the Tour de France every year, allowing viewers to see
GPS location, heart rate, power, cadence, speed of many riders. I?m sure we?ll see a
lot more progress in this area too. It is somewhat hampered because of mobile phone
network latency/bandwidth issues and lack of mobile network coverage, but it?s an
exciting area that we are interested in.

Dan: Peaksware recently purchased the SprintGPS suite of apps to integrate with
TrainingPeaks. What does this mean for TrainingPeaks users?

Gear: We are committed to having world-class software for every screen, whether that?s
your smartphone, tablet or 24? monitor on your desk at the office. And, we want all of
our apps for every screen to integrate with each other seamlessly. These apps gave
us a platform to build out some killer new features and products, and we are already
well under way to extend them to Android. For a few dollars, customers can get the
apps and see what collecting fitness data is all about. A majority of our customerbase
still has no downloadable device. When you collect and add your own data
into TrainingPeaks and see the calendar and charts light up, it?s a very powerful and
compelling emotional connection to our software.

Our mobile apps make it incredibly easy to get data to the cloud. Because smartphones are truly computers in your pocket, they really open up a world of opportunity and we want to be there to provide those tools to our customers. We are seeing huge adoption of mobile, not only through
native apps, but also through our web-app, which can be accessed from nearly any
smartphone. I?m quite certain that we?ll have many customers in the future that
don?t even bother to use the traditional ?browser? interface from a PC or Mac, they?ll
interact with their data entirely through mobile, and we?ll make sure it?s a world-class
experience.

Dan: For the first two days that the new apps went on sale in March, Peaksware
donated all proceeds, over $5000, to three charities, American Cancer Society?s
Determination, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society?s Team in Training and
theNational Multiple Sclerosis Society?s BikeMS programs. What inspired this
gift?

Gear: When we acquired the apps from the original company, we thought we?d be able to
simply transfer the apps from the their iTunes store to our own iTunes store. However,
because of a legal snafu, Apple prevented us from doing so. It meant that all existing
SprintGPS users would have to obtain the apps all over again from our store in order
to continue receiving support and upgrades. Not ideal and a bit of a pain for existing
customers. So, when trying to decide how to manage this snafu, we tried to turn
lemons into lemonade, we didn?t want to force people to buy the apps all over again,
but if we had to, we thought it would be a great opportunity to raise money for charity.

We didn?t want the money from customers that had already paid for the app. Because
we didn?t have any supportable method to make the apps free again, we felt this was
a reasonable solution and our customers would be understanding of the position we
were in. So, although customers would have to re-buy the apps, we made the price 99
cents and donated it all to charity for the initial launch. It was a good way to raise some
money for these great partners of ours.

Dan: Living near the gorgeous Colorado scenery, do you sometimes head out for a
run or a ride with absolutely no data-gathering devices?!

Gear: Well, in fact, I do.. but I hate when it happens. Usually its because one of 10 different
devices that I have is not charged, I forgot it at the office or I can?t find it. Tracking my
data is a motivator for me, and it?s just so easy to record what you did using one of our
compatible devices.

For me, I?ve long given up my competitive racing past, and am
really out to just maintain fitness and have a good time with friends, and I enjoy looking
back at my workouts. It?s almost to the point where if I do a workout without a device, it
feels like it didn?t count! I need that motivation to get me out the door, and the fear of a
blank white TrainingPeaks calendar is what gets me out the door on many mornings!

Dan: Thanks, Gear!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/80PercentMental/~3/RULmy5m-kq8/workouts-have-gone-digital-with.html

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Daniel Wolpert On Why You Have A Brain

Daniel Wolpert is absolutely certain about one thing.  ?We have a
brain for one reason and one reason only, and that?s to produce
adaptable and complex movements,? stated Wolpert, Director of the Computational and Biological Learning Lab at the University of Cambridge.  ?Movement is the only way you have of affecting the world around you.?  After that assertive opening to his 2011 TED Talk, he reported that, despite this important purpose, we have a long way to go in understanding of how exactly the brain controls our movements.

Daniel Wolpert

The evidence for this is in how well we?ve learned to mimic our movements using computers and robots.  For example, take the game of chess.  Since the late 1990s, computer software has been playing competitive matches and beating human master players by using programmed tactics and sheer computing power to analyze possible moves.  However, Wolpert points out that a five-year-old child can outperform the best robot in actually moving chess pieces around the board.

From a sports context, think of a baseball batter at the plate trying to hit a fastball.  It seems intuitive to watch the ball, time the start of the swing, position the bat at the right height to intercept the ball and send it deep.  So, why is hitting a baseball one of the most difficult tasks in sports?  Why can?t we perform more consistently?

The problem is noise.  Not noise as in the sense of sound but rather the variability of incoming sensory feedback, in other words, what your eyes and ears are telling you.  In baseball, the location and speed of the pitch are never exactly the same, so the brain needs a method to adapt to this uncertainty.  To do this, we need to make inferences or beliefs about the world.


The secret to this calculation, says Wolpert, is Bayesian decision theory, a gift of 18th century English mathematician and minister, Thomas Bayes.  In this framework, a belief is measured between 0, no confidence in the belief at all, and 1, complete trust in the belief.  Two sources of information are compared to find the probability of one result given another.  In the science of movement, these two sources are data, in the form of sensory input, and knowledge, in the form of prior memories learned from your experiences.

Thomas Bayes

So, our brain is constantly doing Bayesian calculations to compute the probability that the pitch that our eyes tell us is a fastball is actually a fastball based on our prior knowledge.  Every hitter knows when this calculation goes wrong when our prior knowledge tells our brain so convincingly that the next pitch will be a fastball, it overrules the real-time sensory input that this is actually a nasty curve ball.  The result is either a frozen set of muscles that get no instructions from a confused brain or a swing that is way too early.

Our actions and movements become a never-ending cycle of predictions.  Based on the visual stimuli of the approaching baseball, we send a command to our muscles to swing at the pitch at a certain time.  We receive instant feedback from our eyes, ears and hands about our success or failure in hitting the ball, then log that experience in our memory.

Wolpert calls this process our ?neural simulator? which constantly and subconsciously makes predictions of how our movements will influence our surroundings. ?The fundamental idea is you want to plan your movements so as to minimize the negative consequence of the noise,? he explained.

We can get a sense of what its like to break this action-feedback loop.  Imagine a pitcher aiming at the catcher?s mitt, releasing the ball but then never being able to see where the pitch ended up.  The brain would not be able to store that action as a success or failure and the Bayesian algorithm for future predictions would be incomplete.

Try this experiment with a friend.  Pick up a heavy object, like a large book, and hold it underneath with your left hand.  If you now use your right hand to lift the book off of your left hand, you?ll notice that your left hand stays steady.  However, if your friend lifts the book off of your hand, your brain will not be able to predict exactly when that will happen.  Your left hand will rise up just a little after the book is gone, until your brain realizes it no longer needs to compensate for the book?s weight.  When your own movement removed the book, your brain was able to cancel out that action and predict with certainty when to adjust your left hand?s support.

?As we go around, we learn about statistics of the world and lay that down,? said Wolpert.  ?But we also learn about how noisy our own sensory apparatus is and then combine those in a real Bayesian way.?

Our movements, especially in sports, are very complex and the brain to body communication pathways are still being discovered.  We?ll rely on self-proclaimed ?movement chauvinists? like Daniel Wolpert to continue to map those routes.  In the meantime, you can still brag about the pure genius of your five-year-old hitting a baseball.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/80PercentMental/~3/dAf2Yhp4rAg/daniel-wolpert-on-why-you-have-brain.html

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Source: http://blog.sports-buynow.com/skiing/20110903-145130-Skiing-in-Portillo

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Is This How Barcelona's Xavi Makes Decisions?

When Xavi Hernandez receives the soccer ball in his offensive half of the field, the Barcelona maestro has a world of decisions waiting for him.  Hold the ball while his teammates arrive, make the quick through pass to a slicing Lionel Messi or move into position for a shot.

The question that decision researchers want to know is whether Xavi?s brain makes a choice based on the desired outcome (wait, pass or shoot) or the action necessary to achieve that goal.  Then, could his attitude towards improvement actually change his decision making ability?

Traditionally, the decision process was seen as consecutive steps; first choose what it is you want then choose an action to get you there.  However, a recent study from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University tells us that the brain uses two separate regions for these choices and that they are independent of each other.

?In this study we wanted to understand how the brain uses value information to make decisions between different actions, and between different objects,? said the study?s lead investigator Dr. Lesley Fellows, neurologist and lead researcher. ?The surprising and novel finding is that in fact these two mechanisms of choice are independent of one another. There are distinct processes in the brain by which value information guides decisions, depending on whether the choice is between objects or between actions.?

Fellows? team asked two groups of patients to play games where they chose between either two actions (moving a joystick) or two objects (decks of cards).  Each group had previous damage to different areas of the frontal lobes of their brains.  They could win or lose money based on the success of their choices.

Those that had damage to the orbitofrontal cortex could make correct decisions between different actions but struggled with choices about different objects.  Conversely, the other group, having sustained injury to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, had difficulty with action choices but excelled with object choices.

Dr. Fellows hopes this is just the beginning of more neuro-based studies of decision making. ?Despite the ubiquity and importance of decision making, we have had, until now, a limited understanding of its basis in the brain,? said Fellows. ?Psychologists, economists, and ecologists have studied decision making for decades, but it has only recently become a focus for neuroscientists.?

So, back to Xavi, it seems his decision-making may be a multi-tasking mission by his brain.  Of course, we may never be able to judge the accuracy of any soccer player?s decisions since the actual execution of the motor skills required has an critical effect on the outcome.  In other words, the decision to thread a pass through defenders may be an excellent choice but a number of variables could spoil it, including a mis-kick by Xavi, a sudden last movement by Messi or an alert defender intercepting the pass.

As rare as this may be, Xavi may actually consider his decision a mistake.  How he reacts to that mistake depends on his opinion of neuroplasticity, according to Jason S. Moser, assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University.  ?One big difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how they respond to mistakes,? claims Moser.

He hypothesized that those people, including athletes, who think that their intelligence is fixed often don?t make the extra effort required to learn from their mistakes as they think its futile.  However, if you believe your brain continues to evolve and change over your lifetime, then you will bounce back sooner from a mistake and work harder to improve.

To prove this, his team gave volunteers a memory task to remember the middle letter of a five letter sequence, like ?MMMMM? or ?NNMNN.?  The participants also wore an EEG skull cap that measured brain signals.  After we make a mistake, our brain sends two signals within a quarter second of each other; the first alerts us that we made a mistake while the second signal that indicates we?re aware of the mistake and are working on a solution.

For those in the test group that thought their brains could be improved, they not only did better on successive tests but the second signal from their brain was significantly bigger, indicating their brains were working harder to correct the mistake.  If Xavi feels he can only get better, he will process any mistake at a fundamentally different neuro level than other players.  ?This might help us understand why exactly the two types of individuals show different behaviors after mistakes,? concluded Moser.

Facing a player like Xavi who not only multitasks decisions but also believes he can learn from any mistakes must be a depressing thought for Barcelona?s opponents.

For more stories on the brain and sports, visit Axon Potential on Twitter and Facebook

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/80PercentMental/~3/bzBJ-kZThrI/is-this-how-barcelonas-xavi-makes.html

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