…is Oppenheimer for the NBA’s nuclear offensive age
It’s Oscars Week, which feels like as good a time as any to draw up the NBA storylines and characters which could double as Oscar nominees.
No NBA executive has a more interesting relationship with arcs than Philadelphia 76ers president Daryl Morey. Friday was the opening day of MIT’s Sloan Analytics Conference, the annual haven for stat geeks he co-founded after he left the Boston Celtics to join the Houston Rockets front office in 2007.
Last week, NBA Head of Basketball Operations Joe Dumars announced the league was investigating rule changes that could curtail the offensive explosion that’s seen the league-wide record for offensive rating being set six times in the last seven seasons.
The primary culprit was Morey, whose innovative views on analytics earned him the title of Dork Elvis. In his view, “Being mad about analytics is like being mad about gravity.”
Steph Curry conquered the league with his prowess shooting from downtown, but before the Splash Brothers decimated the league, Morey’s Manhattan Project in the Rio Grande Valley — home of the Rockets’ D-League affiliate — was the genesis of the modern NBA.
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As Rockets general manager, Morey poached Chris Finch from Europe and empowered Nick Nurse, and appointed them as heads of his D-League experiment.
Under Finch, Nurse, and Nurse’s successor Nevada Smith, the Vipers led the league in 3-pointers every season between 2010 and 2014, winning two D-League titles, leading the league in effective field goal percentage four out of six seasons, and in 3-pointers four consecutive seasons
