A self-admitted stats geek experiences a moment of crisis.
I consider myself a proponent of statistics as a means to quantify the game of basketball. After all, analytics are basically what reasonable people use to take their understanding of all kinds of things to the next level.
Just as Google does for online advertising...and IBM does for computing applications...basketball analytics should do (or can do, or is doing) do for the sport of basketball. They should help us see a familiar subject even more clearly.
This isn't make-believe. Points per possession and related stats have already allowed basketball enthusiasts to see the immense value of the corner-three point shot attempt -- now the shot is rampant at all levels of the sport.