List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Two Baskets
Introductory Interlude—Records
Part 1. Counting
1. The Science of Moving Dots
Interlude—Rulers
2. The Culture of Moving Dots
Interlude—Numbers
3. Counting, America’s Game
Interlude—Thermometers
4. Counting America’s Bodies
Interlude—My Basketball Soul
5. Counting for Character
Interlude—One on One
6. Counting for Competition
Interlude—Measuring Sticks
7. Counting for Commerce in College Basketball
Interlude—Magic
8. Counting for Commerce in the NBA
Interlude—Basketball Jesus
9. The Work of Moving Dots
Part 2. What Counts
10. Approaching Basketball Experience
11. The Ethics of Understanding Basketball
Interlude—Basketball Supernatural
12. Feeling Basketball
13. Counting What Counts in Basketball
Coda: When Counting Counts
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Yago Colás is the author of Ball Don’t Lie! Myth, Genealogy, and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball. Currently an independent researcher and writer, he previously taught literature and cultural studies at the University of Michigan.
"Colás, an independent researcher and former University of
Michigan instructor, has authored a fascinating history of the
development of statistics keeping in the sport of basketball. . . .
The author effectively interweaves personal vignettes with his
historical account of how big data has transformed the sport of
basketball."—L. Kong, Choice
“Big data is revolutionizing the analysis and management of
professional sport. In this important book Colás demolishes the
misconception that our data is independent of our value judgments
and challenges us to think about what it is we are really doing
with data. Every data analyst working for a sports team, every
writer or broadcaster who brandishes some statistic, everyone who
thinks they know data, and anyone who trusts others to tell them
what the data means needs to read this book. It will open your
eyes.”—Stefan Szymanski, author of Money and Soccer: A Soccernomics
Guide
“Yago Colás elucidates a dense observation that Charles Barkley
once spat about how the proliferation of quantification in a game
that was first tallied only by a soccer ball tossed through a peach
basket in small-town Massachusetts has become as much a disclosure
about race and culture in America as narratives written and uttered
about the players who score, rebound, and assist. This is
recommended reading for further understanding the complexity of
sport and culture.”—Kevin Blackistone, ESPN panelist, University of
Maryland journalism professor, and Washington Post columnist
“If you enjoy any team sport, Numbers Don’t Lie will take you on a
journey of discovery unlike any you’ve been on before. You will
finish with a deeper understanding of the person and player, the
statistics that are relevant, the context they relate to, and you
will begin to see the things that really matter in the game of
basketball. Be prepared: you will never look at the game of
basketball in the same way again.”—Fergus Connolly, coauthor of The
Process: The Methodology, Philosophy, and Principles of Coaching
Winning Teams
“A profoundly compelling and convincing analysis, Numbers Don’t Lie
offers a vivid combination of cultural dissection, social
explication, personal narrative, technological exposé, and
existential contemplation. Through this heady synthesis Yago Colás
meticulously unpacks the ‘science of moving dots’ through which
basketball has come to be administered, controlled, understood, and
experienced. In doing so he adds significantly to his unique
basketball oeuvre and confirms his position as the leading scholar
of the game.”—David L. Andrews, author of The Routledge Handbook of
Physical Cultural Studies
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