He might not have been the first one to say it, but Jim Valvano, the late basketball coach at N.C. State, had a line that perfectly explained the use of statistics.
“Some people use stats like a drunk uses a light pole – for support instead of illumination.”
Whether or not he coined the phrase, it’s so very true. The use of statistics in sports is growing rapidly, not to mention the new stat categories that seem to be created and accepted every day. The percentage of times a player does just about anything is tracked, recorded and analyzed for any number of reasons.