Editor's note: This post was written by Rafe Bartholomew, author of Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball.

One of my close friends studies at MIT's Sloan School of Business, and when he emailed me a few months ago to ask if I'd be interested in attending Sloan's Sports Analytics Conference, I jumped at the opportunity. Bill Simmons coined the name Dorkapalooza to describe the Sloan Conference, and I thought of the event as the time of year when the apostles of Moneyball in all major sports gathered to spread the gospel of quantitative analysis.

As my love for Willie Miller might suggest, I'm more of a basketball aesthete than a results-minded stats guy. I can forgive the missed free throws, two-for-thirteen games, and the fact that nearly every PBA fan accuses him of selling games as long as Willie converts one of his patented quick spins on the left wing to set up a bank shot.

Continue reading "Dorkapalooza Report: Rafe Bartholomew on advanced stats and its future in the PBA"

Editor's note: This post was written by Rafe Bartholomew, author of Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball.

Let me get something out of the way up front: I am a basketball fanatic. I've played and followed the game my entire life, and with the publication of Pacific Rims last year, the sport has also been at the heart of my biggest achievement. The other half of this equation, of course, is the Philippines, a country that I've come to love as if it were my own. A major part of my relationship with the Philippines is the nation's relationship with basketball, which I found a great deal of inspiration in while devoting five years of my life to studying and writing about Pinoy hoops. So right now, let it be known and acknowledged: I write this from an unapologetically pro-basketball point-of-view.

The Philippine national soccer team has captivated the sports community over the past few months. I don't need to re-cap the Azkals' success in the Suzuki cup or their recent win over Mongolia, since both have been beaten to death in blogs, Tweets and the traditional sports media. Yay!

Continue reading "Rafe Bartholomew to new Pinoy soccer fans: No need to take cheap shots at basketball"