Adrian Wojnarowski's latest Yahoo column is a thorough think piece about what the Memphis Grizzlies' decision to trade Rudy Gay to the Toronto Raptors means for the future of NBA free agency. It's a perfectly fine read, but what caught our attention was this paragraph, tucked away near the end of the column:
[Grizzles CEO Jason] Levien is making these deals based largely on the recommendations of John Hollinger, a statistician who worked for a cable sports company. The San Antonio Spurs once used him as a consultant and regretfully took his advice to sign a free agent named Jackie Butler. It was such a disaster, the Spurs had to attach Luis Scola to a trade to get Butler out of town.
Burn! In case you aren't familiar, John Hollinger recently became the Grizzlies' VP of basketball operations after having spent eight years as ESPN's resident stats guru. He's also the guy who invented PER.
We're not sure what could have prompted Woj to take a shot at Hollinger, but we appreciate the deliciously withering quality of "a statistician who worked for a cable sports company."