Sam Hinkie

So because of the amazing amount of work he had done,

it was clear to us that we needed a couple of things to happen.

One, we needed him to join forces with us.

And two, we needed him to stop leaking this stuff out to the internet.

He was bleeding away small amounts of competitive edge for us.

That was half percent here, 1% there.

It wasn't huge, but I didn't have great confidence that he wouldn't leak out 10% of it in one big post.

That might only be 10 more days away.

He's been now, what is it?

2020, he's been at the Rockets now 12 years and he's done amazing work there.

But much of that was on the backs of his early writing where he could show what he knew.

He didn't have to say, oh, I learned fast.

It was obvious he learned fast.

He didn't have to say, oh, I'm hyper passionate about this.

It was obvious he was.

You've told me this story before, but I've never actually then asked, what was he writing about?

That post one, two, three, whichever one really stood out in memory, what was he writing about and what was so impressive about it?

Things that were mispriced in basketball at the time, how to think about shot location data, how to think about defense at large.

These were the kinds of things that even back then that were wildly misunderstood.

One obvious example is