APBRmetrics

The media is discussing analytics and metrics more and there is a current wave of pushback (see particularly the recent truehoop article).

I took a look at the current record of GMs (or Presidents / final decision makers) with and without NBA playing experience, a trait that it was noted many new hires do not have. I found 9-10 teams with top guys with NBA playing experience (depending on how you want to evaluate Charlotte) and only 3-4 are playoff ranked right now, so 30-40% of those with this important or "essential" attribute are in the playoff seeding. Of the 20-21 without this credential (probably a lot more than 5-10 years ago?), 12-13 are playoff seeds, making it it 60+% of those without the NBA playoff experience currently leading teams that are playoff seeded. This is an opening observation that could be used to question the validity or at the least the sufficiency of the complaint against those without NBA playing experience being in these jobs.

Of course more research should be done to look at their relative performance on such things as draft picks, own free agents, open market free agents, coach hires, offensive and defensive efficiency, overall playoff performance, titles, rebuild time cycles, future prospects, performance / cost effectiveness, etc. I might get to this in mid-range to distant future. But if anyone else wants to get a whirl, using this outline or not, that might be helpful and timely and something that gets attention and prompts more balanced consideration & debate.

A performance comparison of GMs with and without NBA playing experience should ideally be done at different time points to understand if the relative performance at a moment is generally the case or it is significantly influenced by where teams happened to be in their performance cycles. With adequate time and motivation perhaps the criteria mentioned above could be checked for 10, 5 and 3 years earlier and future dates. Maybe with or without NBA playing experience has a better record or maybe it oscillates. Maybe it is a significant causal factor, maybe it is not.