The argument is pervasive.  Kids don’t want or need cable.  They have the internet for content. Why would they pay all that money when they can find most, if not all the entertainment they want and need for free ?

Put another way “kids today”, the twentysomethings,  dont follow the same entertainment consumption paths that their parents and elders do.  The new mantra is “Never trust the media consumption habits of anyone over 30“

Well no shit Sherlock.  Has any generation’s kids consumed media the same way as their parents ?

I’m going to let you in on a secret. The only  20 somethings that are going to consume media  in  10 years the way they do today are the ones  without a job, still living with their parents.

I’m going to let you in on another secret. The older you get, the faster time goes by.  I’m sure there is some scientific explanation for this phenomena. I don’t know it. But I know it is true. Months and years go back faster and faster the older you get.

Which in turn leads to the next truism. The older you get, the more you value your time. You quickly learn that your most valuable possession/asset isn’t one you put on a balance sheet or in your home. It is time. Every minute , hour , day is one you will never get back and there is nothing you can do to earn another.

So what does this have to do with Internet, Internet Video and Traditional TV ?

If you read  my blog posts you know that a recurring theme is that businesses must offer the path of least resistance to their customers. If someone else makes their product easier to buy or use than you, that is when you lose customers the fastest.  This theme is even more important when it comes to entertainment. If you agree that TV is the path of least resistance to a cure for boredom, then it is easy to see that when someone is bored, the more they value their time, the less they will  want to work to find their entertainment.

So to state the obvious: 20 somethings dont value their time as much as 30 somethings who don’t value their time as much as 40 somethings, etc, etc.

Kids have all day to search for pirated music, movies and software. They value the money it would cost to buy the stuff more than they value their time. 20 somethings don’t mind listening to tons of music to find out what they like. They don’t mind rooting through Youtube for hours to find fun stuff. They will listen to music over and over because learning the words and dance steps creates social capital that is more valuable than their time.  They can and will spend hours searching for new stuff. Why ? Because they can.

Once a 20 something gets that job and takes on rent, student loan payments, credit cards, car payments,etc the equation starts to change. They order music from Itunes rather than pirating it.  They click on links and look to see what their friends are doing on facebook as a short cut to the entertainment they should like. They don’t spend time on news, they believe that if news is important, they will see it when someone  posts it on their FB wall or tweets it. Which by itself is a time saving mechanism.

As the real world starts to impact their lives, through job responsibilities , families, whatever else, they start to value time even more and look for ways they can buy time. This is where their entertainment consumption starts to change.  They still want to keep up with Jersey Shore and their favorite sports team. They want to watch it so they can talk about it at work, so they can see the shows they are hearing about online and from friends, or just so they can enjoy watching it. So they consider adding cable when they can afford it, knowing they can cut it (but not cut their internet connection ) if they don’t use it or if they lose their job.

Once a family starts, the economic realities and the importance of time change dramatically.  No one has time to download all the scooby doo episodes the kids want to watch, and you don’t want them carrying around your Iphone/Itouch/Ipad all day, nor do you want to buy your 3 year old their own device. So you recognize that as much as you hate to admit it , traditional TV has its value .  And while you would love to check out those youtube videos the guy in the office sent you, and the ones you saw on your facebook wall, you dont have the time or the brain cycles to deal with it.

By the time 10pm rolls around, you want to vegetate, be entertained and just find a way to calm down so you can go to sleep.

You have reached the point where there aren’t enough hours in the day. The idea of having to expend any more energy than the effort it takes to pick up the remote control, check the programming guide and your DVR list  to see what you want to watch is in and of itself tiring.

The examples are different for everyone, and of course there are exceptions,  but the underlying principal is the same.  The more you value your time, the more you value simple, easy access to cures for boredom, the best of which is TV.  Which is why 20 somethings of every generation find their own unique ways to entertain themselves and their parents do all they can to not have to expend time or energy to cure their boredom.

What kids do today has absolutely nothing to do with how they will consume media as adults or what future generations will do to consume media.

Put together a graph of how people value their time as they age and you will see how their media consumption evolves over time. Add to that graph the various media options currently available and you will see that the simpler and more expensive skew old and the cheaper and more choice options skew younger

There is a widespread misconception that the common thread to industries that the Internet has disrupted is that the disrupted industries were or remain analog and the digital nature of the internet made it impossible for them to keep up.  Put another way, there are those that believe that any business that is doing business like they always have will inevitably be disrupted by the internet. Change or die. Right ?

Wrong

If my memory serves me right, the common thread among those industries that were disrupted is that they all sold their products ala carte.

Music – By the CD

Newspapers – Single Newspaper (Dallas Morning News) sold by copy or subscription

Magazine – Single Magazine (Newsweek) sold by copy or subscription

DVDs – Single copy.

Blockbuster – Rent each DVD

In each of the above examples, the primary revenue stream from the product came from ala carte sales – the purchase of a single product.

Compare that to TV.

TV is sold by aggregators who sell TV in bundles. Not ala carte.

Pick any TV distributor. They aggregate the channels they want to sell into bundles and sell them. From basic service to full service with every channel available. If you want to buy PPV or VOD content, you must first be a subscriber.

Look at Netflix. They sell NOTHING ala carte (like I said, smart as shit). You have to subscribe to their service, then you can select the content you want to watch.

Look at Spotify. Pay by the month or don’t play.

You can even point to Apple and the Itunes store.  They aggregate all the content they can find and they bundle Itunes  with their Phones/IPods/IPads/Macs and force you to buy through this bundle.

Look at the most successful business models on the net. All aggregators of content of one type or another.

Now take a look at all the folks who want to be able to just want to watch what they want, when they want to watch it , where and on the device they want to watch it. They want TV Networks to go ala carte.

Look at the companies who want to try to disrupt TV. What are they all trying to convince the TV networks and content providers to do ? They are trying to convince them to go ala carte. They are trying to convince them to go to a business model that assures their destruction.

Explain to me why they would want to do that ?

My Rule Of Thumb for  disruption in the digital world:

Aggregators disrupt ala carte . Aggregators don’t disrupt  Aggregators, they compete with them.

Just because it seems like much of the internet wants television to be delivered outside traditional platforms doesn’t mean that it’s a good business to pursue. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I think the future of TV is TV. But what is the future of entertainment on your TV ? Entertainment on your TV and TV (video programming) on your TV are not the same thing.

The first question to ask is “Why is TV so popular ?”. Why do so many millions spend so many billions in order to watch the shows, movies and events that TV serves up ?  The answer is the clue to what the future of Apple/Google and their device competitors should be.

TV is the best cure for boredom.  That is what makes TV so popular.

TV is the path of least resistance alternative to doing nothing. When you do nothing. Time passes too slowly. When you are doing something, even something that barely requires consciousness, like watching TV, there is the chance that time will go by more quickly. We look for the path of least resistance to passing time whenever we are bored. All it takes is a click of the tv remote. The boredom ends and there is even the chance that we will be entertained and really like what we are watching. So there is also significant upside to watching TV. So we watch a shitload of TV .

Now ask yourself what you do when you are bored to tears and you don’t have a TV available.  Used to be you played solitaire at your PC at work. Or maybe back in the day you picked up a magazine or book. Now we go to our laptops or  phones. We check our email. Maybe we check a couple websites. But even that burns a limited amount of time.

Once we are done with those mundane tasks and a TV is still not available,  we turn back  to our PC/Phone/device and we play games.

Why do you think social games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc are so popular ? Because they are the path of least resistance to ending boredom when there isn’t a TV around. Add to this the brilliant addition of the social element of competing with your friends that facebook provides and gaming has gone to a whole new level

Yes, there were competitive social games before, but none on a platform everyone you know is already on (facebook). None where they had to do nothing  to join the game and could do it on their own schedule.

Social games are the non TV cure for boredom.

So what do Apple TV IOS and Google TV Android platform offer ? That’s right . Social Games on your TV.

There in lies their Holy Grail to competing with TV.

This isn’t Farmville vs Dancing with the Stars.  This is about the best alternative to boredom.

If Google , Apple and their competitors can find simple games that are compelling to tens of millions of people and create a unique experience on your HDTV, they have a chance to start pulling people away from watching shows on TV.  You could actually see the number of hours spent watching TV decline materially.

Look at the most successful TV programming. American Idol. Dancing with the Stars. Both have a unique social element, voting. People discuss their votes with each other. People take pride in keeping “their choices” on the show (trust me, this is what kept me on Dancing with the Stars). Even Football has Fantasy Football with millions playing. How many times have you watched games with someone more interested in Fantasy scores than the score of the game . “Fall down at the 1 yard line is not an unheard of scream in a group of guys watching a game”

Google and Apple (and  at some point MicroSoft and maybe Sony or Nintendo) have platforms that are open enough to developers who can develop simple games that anyone can play with a facebook login. It wont require any real skill to play, will be very simple, but very addictive.  The law of numbers says someone will come along and invent a game, played best on your TV through one of these boxes,  that catches the imagination of tens of millions and is played on TV nationally or maybe even globally. It’s not inconceivable that this game will release new features, some Power Ups or unique incentives  if you tune in at 8pm EST on thursday night.

The possibility  of millions of people playing some game on Google TV OR Apple TV at the same time has the chance to put a hurt on traditional TV providers. Not whether or not Hulu and Fox , ABC, NBC are blocked from Google TV.

Of course its going to take a few years for enough of either box to get out in the marketplace at current prices.  But its not inconceivable that the right game could drive the uptake of enough boxes to move people from TV Shows to Games on TV

If Apple and Google try to pre empt traditional TV distributors using TV content, the only winner is Netflix and the traditional tv distributors and networks.

If Apple and Google try to   create their own alternatives to boredom, then their only competition is from each other and other comparable platforms. And it really will come down to luck. No one can plan to have that first entertainment application on a device platform that catches the imagination of the country and results in millions of people playing each other at the same time.

But its a business model for Apple and Google that will work.

Before you can win any business, you have to understand what business you are in.

TV as a whole is not in the business of creating great content. Its in the business of curing boredom. Always has been. It has always been the cure with the path of least resistance. Apple and Google TV need to realize that their cures for boredom using TV content won’t ever be the path of least resistance (typing in a search term ain’t it).  BUT, they have a unique development platform that traditional distribution ‘s set top boxes aren’t designed to support. They could create an alternate cure for boredom that is the path of least resistance for tens of millions.

But they have to change the game, not play the same old game.

I personally can’t think of anything stupider for the big broadcast networks to do than give their shows to Google for free. Why ? Because they are finally getting BILLIONS of dollars in retransmission fees from their distributors.  This is new money. It is found money. It is money they are fighting for.  Just ask Fox and Cablevision what they think of each other this week.

The idea that they would take and fight for money from their distributors, who generally are the same ISPs that Google TV delivers content over, and then offer the exact same shows for free through Google TV, or any aggregator that expects that content for free is probably one of the dumbest concepts ever.

Now if Google were to go to those networks and offer them money per month for every buyer of a Google enabled device or TV, that would be different. Then they would be a tv provider competing with the rest and they should take their money. Think Google will ever do that ? I don’t.

So giving the same content  they not only charge their distributors for, but also charge their local affiliates for to Google for nothing or for a share of revenue  ? STUPID.

If Google sticks to their guns of not paying up front for content like Netflix does, they will have handed Netflix the entire streaming universe on a platter.

Did anyone else see the report that Netflix streaming consumes 20pct of download throughput during weekday primetime hours ?

If this is true. Its one more reason to think that Netflix has won the streaming wars and those broadcast networks would be moronic to give their content online away for free. Why ?

First of all, do you know the difference between Netflix and Google when it comes to content ?  Netflix pays up front and offers minimum guarantees.  Google and everyone else for that matter, pays a commission based on ad sales. (which works wonderfully on Youtube for them)

So riddle me this batman. Netflix is on Google TV , correct ? Given that Netflix pays and Google TV doesn’t, why wouldn’t/shouldn’t the broadcast networks offer all of their shows to Netflix as a way to reach Google TV users, knowing that they will get paid for their content. Paid HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OR MORE for their content.

All you internet pundits want the broadcast networks to give the content away for free. THAT IS STUPID.  Get Netflix to pay you on a per subscriber basis on a par with  what your other TV providers pay you. Netflix becomes a competitive TV provider. BRILLIANT. You get paid. You reach Google TV users and non Google TV users.

Of course you basically cede to Netflix  control of the streaming content world. You give their streaming only subscriptions a unique value beyond old shows and movies. Goodbye Hulu as well.

Of course once they get the broadcast nets, how long until they add the cable nets like ESPN, Disney, etc., etc. ?

Back to the Netflix using 20pct of bandwidth.  Now that they have gotten there, it is going to be easier for Netflix than anyone else to grow their bandwidth usage. They can add streaming subscribers at a controlled level and it could work.  Growing their usage as a percentage of total bandwidth consumption quickly becomes a trojan horse in the streaming wars.  They are consuming so much bandwidth, they literally are blocking out the ability of anyone to compete with them.

If Netflix gets to 25pct do you think Google is going to be able to also get to 25pct during primetime and all of the sudden 50pct of the internet’s bandwidth during primetime  is allocated to streaming tv originated shows, movies and other video ? Of course not. And that’s before consideration for Youtube. How much bandwidth in primetime does and will Youtube use ? After you combine Netflix and their growth to Youtube and its growth, what kind of internet bandwidth  is going to be left for anyone else for streaming TV to millions ?

There will be big problems and lots of quality and delivery issues long before we get close to those percentages. Leaving Netflix in a phenomenal position.  They get to adapt to a declining available bandwidth environment  with an existing product , revenue and subscriber base. There is no such thing as equal access when you are blocking up 25pct of the lanes on the highway 24×7. The others can’t even get on the ramp.

Their competitors have to figure out how not only how to overcome the technical hurdles of reduced available bandwidth, but also a business model since no one will want to give content away for free when Netflix can pay them.

Netflix is smart as shit.

Netflix is also great for traditional TV providers. TV works. TV works for any number of subscribers or viewers. 100pct of the digital bandwidth that TV uses is designed, managed and operated purely for the distribution of TV and complementary features. It will work.

Netflix should end up as the only “TV” provider that truly works on the internet,  Which means that content providers like the broadcast and cable networks can be paid by Netflix on a per sub basis for their subs  who want to subscribe via the net, and from traditional tv providers for those who want buffer free, (relatively) full quality TV the old fashioned way.

Oh, and one more thing. Expect your internet bills to go way way up as ISPs make it clear that all this video over the internet is going to require billions in upgrades. The irony is that while you may not like paying for cable channels you don’t watch. You will end up paying for cable channels on the internet that you don’t watch as well. In this case you will be paying via higher net bills for the extra bandwidth required to stream cable channels that your neighbors like to watch

This is a post about content that I wish I had written.  Props to Peter Kim for recognizing an emerging trend among content creators.  They are giving up. They are narrowing their audience scope to where they can make money or have the most impact. Or, they are selling out. (See TechCrunch).  Im not sure where I read it, but I believe Michael Arrington of TechCrunch said it was the exhaustion of the grind that led him to sell more than anything else.

Its the grind. Here we are years into social media. Blogging.  Vertical Social Networks (see Ning). Content creators have been grinding it out chasing the ability to make a living and possibly put some money away for the better part of a decade with little or no success. Rather than continue to 6am to midnight grind, they are revamping or selling. You can’t blame them. At some point every business has to become not only a labor of love, but one that can pay off your credit card dreams as well.

No one wants to live in the content ghetto forever. Below is an article I wrote 4 years ago. its as valid today in concept  as it was back then.

Is the Internet A Long Tail Ghetto ?

Oct 28th 2006 5:38AM

Chris Anderson did a masterful job of identifying and defining The Long Tail back in 2004 in a Wired Article. What i havent seen yet is a definition of when content crosses over from being part of the long tail, and onto the Vert Ramp (The perfect term to steal from skateboarding).

I think trying to define where the Long Tail ends and the Vert Ramp begins is critical, because the fact of the matter is: No Content Creator wants to be on the Long Tail. Anyone who has ever created content realizes that there is a very thick bar a bit above the the base of the Vert Ramp that acts as a content ceiling (thanks to Oliver Luckett for the term). that they are desperately trying to break through in order to get off the long tail and on to the Vert Ramp.

The concept of the content ceiling recognizes that there is a hierarchy that each content creator tries to work their way up.

First content providers, whether podcasters, vloggers, bloggers, movie makers, writers, poets, whatever the content type make the decision of the creation of the content is about love or money. Is the goal of the finished product commercial, or purely personal ?

If the goal is commercial, whether to make money directly or indirectly from the content, then the battle to fight through the Content Ceiling begins.

The bottom line is that people want to get paid for their work. Creators have a vision. They think there is something special about it, and they want to get rewarded for their effort. Its a simple goal in concept, but its incredibly difficult to achieve.

Very few commercial content creators aspire to get 10k aggregate views from all the videohosting sites. Very few bands are happy with having 10k free downloads , or even 10k friends on Myspace as their endgame. Very few commercial content creators aspire to see their creations end up on Community Access TV. All content creators recognize each of these as a way to create incremental demand for their content, in hopes of breaking through the Content Ceiling, but none of these will reward the content creator with direct revenue. For content creators trying to make a living from their work, they all just represent the Long Tail Ghetto.

The first step towards the Vert Ramp and up the hierarchy is to get paid. More and more sites like Revver are creating opportunities for video creators to make money, just as sites like WeedShare.com and CDBaby.com have been doing for music for years. The reality however, is that  very few make minimum wage for their work.

If a content creator gets paid for his/her work, that by itself pulls them out of the longtail of the longtail. Thats how difficult it is.

The next step up the hierarchy comes from breaking out at least once. You got paid enough for your work to think you or your company have a chance to create content full time. It may be a one time reward, or just the first of many rewards. But as long as its just one so far, you are still in the long tail. Still underneath the content ceiling looking up at the Vert Ramp, but at least you lost your financial virginity.

Its for those that have gotten paid that the content ceiling really becomes an issue. At this point, the content creator has had a taste of some level of success and the pressure is on not only to recreate that success in some manner, but also to gain financially from it. Are you a 1 hit wonder, or a meal ticket ?

At this point, in order to fight through the content ceiling almost all content creators look to Big Money for help. Big Money is/are all the people and companies that control distribution and have big bank accounts. They are the people who can elevate the content creators from fearing their lights will be off when they get home, to buying a new house.

For all the talk of the internet changing distribution, the reality is that in order to break through the Content Ceiling and to climb the Vert Ramp, 99.9 pct of content creators are going to do need OPM (Other Peoples Money). The internet alone is not going to get the job done. You can put your content everywhere and anywhere the net allows you to be hosted, but for most people the amount of revenues for that content you had before you started the hosting process will be the exact same as what you have after the hosting process.

This is exactly why media celebrates when someone is discovered on Youtube, or when a contest winner is given a budget to produce a broadband show, or possibly even a TV show for a cable network. They broke out from poverty to primetime. This is exactly why they said yes to production deals and financing. They know that they cant break through the content ceiling without the help. Revver and its peers are working hard to change this, but its far from there.

Its not that signing a deal with a Big Money company guarantees that you will sell enough of your content to break onto the VertRamp. It certainly doesnt. There are plenty of failures with Big Money behind them. However, regardless of content type, if Big Money invests enough of their money and distribution, you chances of being on the VertRamp have increased exponentially.

If you do a deal with Big Money, AND your content sells enough to be on the Vert Ramp of content sales in your genre, you have broken through the content ceiling. The chances are very good that BigMoney will want to work with you again. They have made money from their investment in you. Success breeds success. They will probably come back to you and give you another shot to stay above the content ceiling and climb higher up the Vert Ramp

Once you as a creator have broken through the content ceiling and are on the Vert Ramp, the rules of the game get interesting. In fact, the success of your work, is far more dependeng on Big Money than it is on you. The further up the ramp (unless you reach the very top), the less influence you have in the success of your content. The competition on the Vert Ramp is cut throat. Big Money vs Big Money with enormous stakes. They dont want your help. They want to be Big Money and do what Big Money does. They try to make as much money as possible.

Every Big Money company wants everyone of their products to reach the very top of the Vert Ramp. To be #1 in sales, ratings, viewers, whatever their critical metric is. This is an important definition at this point in time. With all the discussion of the value of views and listens on the internet, it raises the question of just how valuable is a view or listen to a product/company with a product on the Vert Ramp.

The first distinction that needs to be made is a view/listen that Big Money creates versus one that a user creates for Big Money content. Big Money created views/listens are controlled to the liking of Big Money. You only see or hear what they want you to see or hear. So we dont have to identify value there. They do that internally before the content is posted.

User Created uploads of Big Money content , infringing content a user uploads content that belongs to someone else on to a hosting site for open consumption is a different story.

A lot of people feel that user uploads of infringing content is always a good thing. its new or incremental viewership. Its a new fan for a TV show. Its possibly a revenue share o
f advertising. All would seem to be positive. However they are not always positive.

A revenue share might seem great, until you realize that the videohost selling advertising around The Daily Show is competing with the Comedy Central sales force that is selling ads on the TV show, in the cable VOD, on the ComedyCentral.com website, on the mobile distribution of the show, etc, etc. It may also be competing for viewers, with the revenue per user from their website split being lower than what they earn for ads on the TV show itself.

This is a simple example. You can find examples of how it helps and how it hurts for any piece of infringing content. But the real question is; At what point does the copyright owner, usually Big Money, step in and say that they dont want their content being uploaded by users ? Here is a way to get an idea when.

I think there is a correlation between the Vert Ramp and the value of “views” on video hosting sites, or listens on illegal download sites. In fact they are inversions of each other.

Each company has an expectation of where their content will fall on the Vert Ramp. They have a point they consider failure. They have a point they consider break even. They have a point they consider good, not great. They have a point where its a success. Each is a higher and higher point up the Vert Ramp.

If we were to graph that point on the Vert Ramp, the higher up the Vert Ramp the performance is, the less value there is to views of infringing uploaded content . In addition, the higher up the Vert Ramp the performance is, the more likely BIg Money will go after the infringer or host to take down the infringing content. The reason is obvious. The more successful the content, the more confidence Big Money has in its ability to optimize the value of the content to their organization.

The more control Big Money wants over every aspect of the content. Infringing content creates risk to them that can negatively impact value (an exclusive interview on a super popular syndicated talk show that airs at different times around the country). Its not that they always will. Maybe Fox likes the idea of American Idol videos around the net. I dont know. But i do know that they likelihood that they will have questioned it is much higher than say from the producers of a tv show that is underperforming or at risk of cancellation. The more expectations of performance are achieved, the less value a view or listen online is.

On the flipside of course, the lower on the Vert Ramp, the more value of every listen or view. Big Money content that is not meeting expectations lets users do whatever they want with their content in hopes of increasing their metrics past the failure , then break even points. So it wont be unusual to see one company allow content from one show to slide under the radar in terms of copyright violation, while pumping out takedown notices for another show.

I think its an interesting discussion. What is the long tail. What happens when content gets off. What happens to the people who are on it. what is the impact of the internet. Is the only way out of the Internet Long Tail ghetto to work with Big Money ?

Time will tell.

I wrote the article below in 2004.  Almost 6 1/2 years ago.  I went back to read it because I wanted to know if the science has changed at all or if the building of an NBA team has changed due to the science.  The answer is no and no. The science is the same and in fact, the input of numbers into building a team is diminishing and being displaced by non traditional qualitative  factors

Sure  many of us across the NBA have spent a boatload of money on “sabremetrics”. It has not been valueless. We are  better able to  coach the teams we have because of all the information.  But the reality is, we can not put together teams based on stats. You can take all the PER, WS48, WP48, Adv plus/minus and the rest and when you add them together the day before the season starts you still know nothing more than the minute before you added them all together. They are meaningless when it comes to putting together a team.

Why is this the case  ? Two reasons: coaching and chemistry.

Each coach has a different style and each player contributes differently depending on the players around them and the style of play and coaching.  How a player on another team will fit into the coaching environment and system of your team can not be answered by stats.

Add to that the material impact chemistry has on a team, where one nucklehead hurts, two nuckleheads kill  and bad chemistry ruins a season and the numbers and analysis quickly become meaningless.  You can try to understand both coaching and chemistry, and we continue to experiment with new ways to do so, but you can’t quantify either.

Until you can quantify coaching and chemistry, you can not use the numbers to build a team. Period end of story. You can use them as partial input along with scouting and other elements, but there ain’t no Moneyball solution or the NBA and I don’t see Bill James walking through that door with a solution. Stats will continue to play a role in lineups, matchups and trends, but teambuilding, not so much.

Of course there are other elements that we are rapidly expanding at the Mavs that go into our team-building methodology, but I’m keeping all that to myself

But for shits and grins, here is my article from April 2004

The question comes up all the time. What is the NBA equivalent of MLB’s Moneyball approach? Are there stats that can be used to come up with a better model for building an NBA team? The answers are Yes and No.

Yes, there are stats that are out there that could be used to better build an NBA team, but No, they can’t be used for building an NBA team, because the stats that most likely most correlate to a player and team’s success are not being collected.

I’m not here to say I know exactly which variables independently, or collectively equate to getting a competitive and financial advantage. Only actual testing will determine what works. I will say which stats I think are most important, and let you know that its more than just a little bit of a logistics challenge to try to accumulate accurate data.

Here are the stats I think the Mavs will need to figure out how to collect as a first effort towards determining which have the greatest impact on success:

1. Deflections, Deflections for turnovers
2. Defensive Penetrations Allowed, Defensive Penetrations stopped (did you stop your man from penetrating in the paint before he shot or gave up his dribble)
3. Assists in paint, Assists outside of paint, within each, assists leading to jumpshots, assists leading to layups, assists leading to foulshots, and within each of these, are they part of fastbreak or not.
4. Rebounds in traffic, Rebounds from free throws
5. Shot percentages – location zone of shot, and within each, whether guarded or open
6. Turnovers – forced, unforced, rule violation turnovers by type (traveling, palming, etc.)
7. Touches – How often, where, duration in seconds, conclusion (pass, assist, shot, turnover as a percentage of total touches)
8. Charges taken, blocks given
9. Blocks above head, blocks that were strips, fouls on block attempts by each
10. Turnovers caused – steals, forced by defense (i.e., preventing your man from crossing 8 sec line, or guarding your man for more than x seconds leading to 24 sec clock violation)

There are obviously more, but these are a good starting point to see what works. Unfortunately, this data is not always available just from tape, so it would be necessary to have multiple peopleat the scorers table at the game to see it, confirm it and get help on it. That’s what makes all this so difficult to collect. It may well be that we need to add cameras to each gym that can cover all the action and then go back and determine the information. Either way is expensive, which means it could be along time in coming to the NBA.