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Ars checks in from the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where the geeks, marketers, and athletes rub shoulders and hopefully learn from one another.

By Brad Stenger | March 12, 2009

Back around the time of the NBA All-Star Game, the subject of "basketball analytics" hit the headlines. On February 9, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, blogged about his team's stats-driven system for evaluating players and player lineups. Without giving away the guts of the system, Cuban explained that it values a player's performance more during close games and also looks at overall consistency. "Scoring when up by 30 is worth nothing," Cuban wrote. "The lower the variance, the more consistent the player on offense or defense."

One week after Cuban's blog post, the New York Times Magazine wrote about Shane Battier and the Houston Rockets' statistical approach to managing a basketball game.

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