Sprawlball Quotes

“You can read Moneyball as a testament to the analytical awakening in American sports, but you can also read it as a celebration of the irreversible integration of finance ideals and sports strategies. You can read it as a manual for integrating the ideological insights of finance capitalism into a front office, but you can also read it as evidence that our culture’s outrageous mania for computation, quantification, and efficiency is now striding alongside our favorite athletes on the playing surfaces of Fenway Park and Madison Square Garden. Make no mistake, this mania has always been there, but in post-Moneyball America, computation, quantification, and efficiency have achieved a superstar status like we’ve never seen before.”
― Kirk Goldsberry, Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA

“Think about that. To watch these games these days is to watch 24-foot jump shots over and over and over again. Moreover, to watch these games these days is to watch most of those shots miss.”
― Kirk Goldsberry, Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA

“The addition of the three-point shot is the biggest rule change in any major sport in my lifetime. Imagine for a moment if FIFA suddenly ruled that any goals shot from beyond the 18-yard line are worth one and a half goals,”
― Kirk Goldsberry, Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA

“If it’s true that three-point shots go in 36 percent of the time and 10-foot shots go in just 40 percent of the time, then why are we assigning 50 percent more value to shots from beyond that magical little arc?”
― Kirk Goldsberry, Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA