SACRAMENTO -- Changes are coming to the Sacramento Kings. The team quietly made news on Monday evening when it was reported that Roland Beech, the Kings VP of Basketball Results, will not return after two years on the job.
But Sacramento hasn't abandoned the analytics movement. In fact, they are about to invest heavily in a new group, with a new face at the helm. -- Luke Bornn, who will join the Kings front office as the new VP of Analytics and Strategy, NBC Sports California has learned.
In accepting the role, Bornn, 31, will leave soccer giant A.S. Roma as well as his positions as an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University and visiting scholar at Harvard University. He'll be taxed with building a new department in Sacramento that will look to bring in some of the brightest minds in the field of analytics.
He is a stat head for sure, but one with a focus on creating a system of sketching and mapping the spatial movements of players using the incredible technologies now available to teams through the NBA's SportVU system.
"We'll be looking at more advanced modeling tools often with the player tracking data to try and get a deeper understanding of player performance," Bornn told NBC Sports California. "There is a lot of what happens on the court that really is not picked up by the box score. A lot of players that make big contributions make it in ways that don't appear. It's not an assist, it's not a rebound, it's not a block."
According to their site, "SportVU utilizes a six-camera system installed in basketball arenas to track the real-time positions of players and the ball 25 times per second. Utilizing this tracking data, STATS is able to create a wealth of innovative statistics based on speed, distance, player separation and ball possession."
Sports
Introduced to the basketball data world while working at Harvard in 2012 by Kirk Goldsberry, who now works for the San Antonio Spurs front office, Bornn is already well known in the basketball world for his work.
"Kirk and I sort of hit it off," Bornn said. "He had just gotten SportVU data and he basically said to me, ‘I have this data, but I have no idea what to do with it, I have the basketball side, but I don't have the technical side.' I had the technical side and so it started a long collaboration of working with player tracking data."
Bornn has co-authored papers presented at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in each of the previous four years, including four straight Sloan finalist papers.
Every team in the league has someone looking over this data, but Bornn hopes to tailor the information to the needs of the Kings' staff.
"It's not about me coming in and saying, ‘Here is how to think about the game and here's the magic numbers,'" Bornn said. "It's really about me going to them and saying, ‘How do you think about the game, what is it that you care about, is there questions you want answered and can I help you with that?'"
The plan is for Bornn and his team to build a database of sorts that is accessible to players, coaches and the front office that relies heavily on video to show information, instead of just numbers on a page. They will have your conventional statistics, but an array of other options as well specifically created for the team.
"My role with the Kings will be all encompassing," Bornn said. "It's player evaluation, opponent scouting, it's performance - with the sports science group there. We'll be looking at all aspects, from the basics of stats, all the way to the more advanced metrics."
From developing oncourt strategies to charting player health, Bornn and his team will make information accessible to the Kings' front office, coaching and medical staff with the hope of adding yet another resource for the franchise.
Predicting player injuries is one of the hot button topics in the NBA at this moment with the league going as far as elongating the All-Star break and taking another 10 days onto the schedule to help spread out back-to-back games. It's a complex issue that is in its fledgling stages.
"In terms of injuries, that's where everyone wants to go and I think that's where we'll aim to go as well, but right now, that's very much an unsolved problem," Bornn said.
It appears that the Kings are jumping into the analytics field with both feet. Bornn is moving to Sacramento with his family and will be on the ground as the Kings prepare for a very important 2017 NBA Draft and then free agency.
