‘Chuck’s An Idiot’: Watch Keith Olbermann Take Down Charles Barkley

We weren’t exactly surprised the ridiculously misinformed and hilariously articulated take that Charles Barkley offered on analytics during Inside The NBA earlier this week. The Hall-of-Famer is far closer to simple television personality than actual hoops analyst these days, and members of his passed generation aren’t exactly keen on many aspects of the modern NBA – not just the advanced numbers movement. Still, it sure is gratifying for  “basketball nerds” like us when a national voice echoes ours.

Thank you, Keith Olbermann. Here’s our favorite portion of the diatribe above:

Chuck’s an idiot.

See Chuck, you use analytics – you just misremember them. Every statistic is an analytic… Free throw percentage, rebounds, touches, assists – analytics! So Chuck, shut up! You lost! You are relying on analytics right now!

Talk about getting to heart of the issue at hand.

Irrespective of any critique on the Houston Rockets’ defense, Barkley is simply missing the point of analytics: they aren’t a rule, but a guideline like so many other means of assessment. And as Olbermann so brazenly says, Chuck has been using them for decades.

Via Keith Olbermann

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