Milkwaukee Bucks fans put on your rally caps. After a painful 2015-16 campaign your team has made an acquisition that has many NBA front offices turning their heads. But this addition is not a figure you will see running up and down the court draining three-pointers next season. Seth Partnow, managing editor of Nylon Calculus, will be joining the Bucks’ analytics team. Yes, you read that correctly. A blogger could be provide the spark to improve on the team’s 12th place finish in the Eastern Conference last season. As big data and analytics become an essential strategic tool in professional basketball, Partnow will be in a position to provide an insight and edge to take the young and talented Bucks to the next level.
Nylon Calculus is part of the Hardwood Paroxym Basketball Network, which is widely considered to be the most innovative and easily accessible source for numerous NBA team and player stats. Following a guideline based on curiosity and transparency, Partnow helped Nylon Calculus to develop a whole new range of statistics that broke down elements of each game from rim protection to individual playmaking ability, to name a couple.
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Seth is also credited with finding increasingly effective ways to use SportVU : a six-camera system used in NBA arenas to track the movement of players and the ball at a rate of 25 times per second in real-time. Using the SportVU system, he will be able to analyze and break down player performance such as speed, distance covered and time away from the ball during live-play.
Following an absence of posting during the NBA Playoffs, Partnow made the announcement of his recent hiring on the Nylon Calculus website. Addressing his time away from the job, Seth said, “As you might have noticed, I have somewhat disappeared as a #contentgenerator during the last bit of the NBA Playoffs. The reason for this is very happy news. Earlier this month, I began consulting for the Milwaukee Bucks…. I’d say this was a dream job, but that would imply that I had considered such a thing possible when I started doing this as a hobby a few years back. I have to give a hearty thanks to the Bucks organization and specifically to Mike Clutterbuck, the team’s Director of Analytics, for this opportunity.”
So, I’ve got some news: https://t.co/tiqr9lPEJk
— Seth Partnow (@SethPartnow) May 31, 2016
Partnow made his future relationship with his readers clear by stating that he will now avoid speaking of how calculated statistics in his future postings, especially steering clear of relating the data to specific teams and players. The cost of breaching NBA and team rules is too costly to his new position. He elaborated on what he believes is acceptable by adding: “I am certainly still available to answer general questions such as ‘where do I find…’ and ‘what does metric X really measure…’ but commenting on how those things apply to specific teams or players and especially to Milwaukee’s players and performance is probably against league rules and definitely outside the bounds of seeking competitive advantage and basic common sense.”
Partnow’s addition to the Bucks’ franchise fits well with the vision that owners Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry bring to the table after acquiring the team just two years ago. Their meshing of new technology and data with team strategy will certainly provide a smooth transition for Seth to hit the ground running. Nylon Calculus will have big shoes to fill but Milwaukee Bucks fans, on the other hand, should be pleased at this forward-thinking move.