Charles Barkley Says Analytics Didn’t Make the Houston Rockets Good


Sir Charles isn’t sold on the increasing importance of analytics in the NBA. When he analyzes a team on the rise such as the Houston Rockets — a team painstakingly constructed and re-constructed by GM and analytics wiz Daryl Morey — Charles Barkley points to big money paid to big stars as being the biggest difference maker. (Chuck also rails on the Philadelphia Sixers.) Per CBS Radio: “Charles On The Sixers: ‘I’m disappointed because I thought they treated those assistant coaches bad. They should have fired them at the beginning of the summer and gave them an opportunity to get another job, I do. I mean, I don’t understand why you would hold them, let them work the team out all summer, now it’s too late for them to get a job, and if I’m the [Brett] Brown guy I wouldn’t want somebody else’s assistant coaches. He may not even know those guys, and exactly what he did. He fired them right away, and I felt bad for Aaron [McKie] and Michael [Curry] because right now they’re stuck in no where because all the good jobs are gone now. And also, I had a problem with—if I’m a coach I would want to have some say in the draft, I would want to have some say in the draft. These are all Sam Hinkle’s people who they drafted this year. He traded one of the better point guards in the NBA, yeah I have a problem with the way the Sixers are running their organization right now. Listen, Howard, you know I don’t believe in that analytical crap. If LeBron James couldn’t spell cat, I want him on my team. I always tell people, give me a dumb guy that can really play. Don’t give me no smart guy. The guy, he came from Houston. When did Houston get good? When they went out a paid James Harden all that money and [Omar] Asik, and now they went out a got Dwight Howard. That’s got nothing to do with analytics, that’s got to do with paying really good players to come to town.'”