It goes into how Battier gets to see the charts and statistics for the players on the opposing team, so that he'll have better odds when defending against their jump shots.
I think nowadays such analysis plays a big part in sports. For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't.
"For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't."
I agree with you in general, but that's not the best example you could have used there.
Maradona spent most of the tournament boasting about not needing a gameplan, and saying things things like: "Nobody ever told me where to play. So I shouldn't have to tell Messi where to play, either".
I wonder what Pep Guardiola (Messi's coach at Barcelona) thought about that remark. Messi, like many players[1], has played significantly better for his club than for his country.
I lack specific examples or links, but had heard a few years ago that U.S. pro sports franchises like the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots, to think of two, use a lot of "Quant" analysis in addition to traditional coaching methods. I'm sure everyone is doing it across pro sports now.
They specialize in providing data and analytics on financial data. Clearly they didn't think it was too much of a leap to go from analyzing securities to analyzing baseball players.
One interesting point is that there is no "salary cap" for sports statisticians, so rich teams are not restricted about what they spend on numerical analysis. Morey hinted that several (most?) NBA teams spend in the 7-figures on it.
Jerry Lucas used his own memory system and his personal collection of data on opponents to his advantage during his extremely successful basketball career.
The video at the following link discusses it briefly. At the moment I can't find any more detailed discussion of it.
It goes into how Battier gets to see the charts and statistics for the players on the opposing team, so that he'll have better odds when defending against their jump shots.