Column: Do numbers in sports tell a story, or just settle a bet?

Available every year More than 500,000 American boys Approximately 20,000 play on high school basketball teams, and less than 2% will make it to March Madness. Only 60 young players are drafted by an NBA team each summer, and a third of those spots in the final draft go to international players.

The numbers suggest that the league from the Amateur Athletic Association to the NBA is one of the narrowest in sports. And we were talking about the game with the respect that the exception means. Numbers are how we decide who is an All Star or a Hall of Famer. Numbers are how we determine—or discuss—the greatest.

Gambling and cheating scandals are not the only threat to sports. Because of the economic gravity of fantasy sports leagues and legalized gambling, the numbers we hear most of these days have more to do with players making money than making shots.

Bill James—the godfather of baseball analytics, who coined the term sabermetrics in the late 1970s—didn’t revolutionize the way the sports industry looked at data so we could make more reasonable bets. The first fantasy baseball league didn’t start in a New York restaurant in 1980 to beat Las Vegas. The numbers were initially about the love of the game. But since sports media personalities have decided to spin false debates for ratings – at the expense of pure fandom – absurd hot views have set the agenda of the programs, and the numbers that tell us something about the players are used to win empty arguments. And later States began legalizing sports bettingAthletes went from focus to paralyzing as props.

This is not to say that gambling did not exist before. Indeed, while James and others revolutionized the way fans — and front offices — evaluated players, the Boston College point-shaving scandal loomed large in the shadows. The current case of gambling surrounds Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, who this week He pleaded not guilty Allegations of a role in a poker-fixing scheme are not unprecedented. This is just the last one.

What’s new is how we talk about numbers.

The whole idea of ​​fantasy sports leagues was to give fans the ability to be their own general managers – not to make money, but because we care so much about the game. At the risk of sounding more pious than I am: when every game, every half, every quarter, and even every shot is tied to gambling odds, the old-fashioned storytelling stops. Instead of learning about players and using numbers to describe them, we hear numbers like how private companies look at target properties.

Nothing personal, just information.

That was the whole point about loving sports was personal Our favorite players weren’t just about results. They were 1 of 500,000 boys who made it. Each one had a backstory, and the way they got there was a big part of the connection we felt with them.

That’s why the Billups saga hits the NBA community so emotionally. Drafted in 1997, the Colorado native played for four teams in his first five years before becoming an All-Star and Finals MVP. His numbers aren’t what defined him—though those numbers were good enough to land him in the Hall of Fame. It was the passion and character he showed while trying it that fans appreciated. In the early struggles of his career, we were reminded that it’s hard to make it in the NBA and that everyone in the league is struggling. It’s something we all know…but when broadcasters come out of commercial breaks showing the batting lines before the score, it’s easy to forget.

Thanksgiving is sports weekend and thus gambling weekend. Go ahead, eat irresponsibly…that’s another bad thing that worries me.

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