NBA number-crunch<br/><span class='hl2'>How Oklahoman uses stats not found in the box score</span>

Data analysis, statistical immersion, a deep dive into numbers that can confuse all but the intelligentsia, came to baseball 20 years ago and now is mainstream.

Such number-crunching finally has come to basketball, packed in the brain and the eyeballs of people like Sam Hinkie. The pride of Stephens County.

The Houston Rockets' vice president of basketball operations, a Price College of Business alum and 1996 Marlow High School grad, seems an unlikely factor in the NBA playoffs.

A campus leader at OU, graduating summa cum laude. Went to work for Bain and Co., a global strategy consulting firm. Resigned to get an MBA from Stanford.

Sounds like a path to the Petroleum Club, if not Wall Street. Instead, Hinkie is analyzing Dikembe Mutumbo's rebounds and recommending whether the Rockets should trade Bonzi Wells for Bobby Jackson.

And Hinkie does it with stats that don't show up in the box score.

Player points per minute. Team points per possession. Rebound percentage. Not exactly the raw numbers we embrace to argue LeBron James vs. Kobe Bryant. But almost surely more accurate.

For instance, is Stephen Jackson's 20.1 points a game more impressive than Tim Duncan's 19.3, considering Jackson's Warriors play much more quickly than Duncan's Spurs and thus have a lot more possessions? Hinkie's computers can tell you.

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