http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/sports/basketball/jeremy-lins-potential-foreseen-by-ed-weiland-of-hoopsanalyst-site.html

Truck Driver’s Analysis Predicted Lin’s Potential as a Professional
By BENJAMIN HOFFMAN

When Bill James arose out of nowhere with his self-published Baseball Abstract books in the late 1970s, he represented something the world of sports was unfamiliar with: an informed voice who was neither an employee of a team nor an established journalist.

James, who had been a night security guard when he first began writing, has since established himself as one of the more interesting minds in the game and is now part of the Boston Red Sox brain trust.

His ascension made clear that the statistics of various sports were out there for anyone to analyze and dissect. It is not necessary to sit in the press box every day or have a notebook full of anecdotes from the clubhouse. Numbers, often enough, speak for themselves. The question is who is listening.

In the case of Jeremy Lin, one of those paying attention was a FedEx delivery truck driver in Bend, Ore., named Ed Weiland, who moonlights as a contributor to HoopsAnalyst.com. Before the 2010 N.B.A. draft, Weiland examined Lin’s body of work as a college player at Harvard and concluded that he might be among the best point guards available.

At the time, Weiland was essentially ignored. Now he looks like a prophet.

He has seen his own profile soar as Linsanity has taken hold of the N.B.A.; the increased traffic to the HoopsAnalyst site crashed its servers multiple times.

If you look hard enough on the Internet, you can find blogs predicting breakouts for more players than you can possibly remember. But it was the specificity of Weiland’s argument for Lin that set his analysis apart.

In it, Weiland equated the chances of finding a star point guard in the 2010 draft to winning the lottery.

“The best candidate to pull off such a surprise might be Harvard’s Jeremy Lin,” Weiland wrote. “The reason is two numbers Lin posted: 2-point FG pct and RSB40.”

While 2-point field-goal percentage is easy enough for a casual fan to figure out, RSB40 is not. It is a combination statistic for a player’s rebounds, steals and blocks per 40 minutes.

“These numbers show N.B.A. athleticism better than any other,” Weiland said. “Because a high score in both shows dominance at the college level on both ends of the court.”

That is not to say that Weiland saw all of this coming.

“Gosh no, he’s been incredible,” Weiland said in a telephone interview when asked if he expected Lin to be this good. “I compared him to George Hill, who was with the Spurs at the time, another guy from a small college who showed useful ability. But what he’s done has been crazy.”

Weiland and James are hardly alone when it comes to seemingly ordinary citizens outdoing the work of people who are paid to analyze players. From Ron Shandler, who turned his ability in fantasy sports into a brief stint in the front office of the St. Louis Cardinals, to Lindy Hinkelman, a pig farmer from Idaho who has won more than $300,000 playing fantasy baseball, there continue to be outsiders who have used statistics to force their way into the national conversation.

One example is Rany Jazayerli, a dermatologist and Kansas City Royals fan who in his spare time helped start Baseball Prospectus, a popular Web site for statistics and analysis. Jazayerli also managed a Royals blog for a number of years before becoming a columnist for Bill Simmons’s Grantland Web site, which operates as part of ESPN.

Weiland and Jazayerli both cited the lack of a direct relationship to the game as one of the reasons for their success.

“I think the lack of access is a factor, sure,” Jazayerli said. “There are many, many, many things that an outsider isn’t in a position to write about. But I think for insiders, it’s hard to be objective, and even harder to write objectively when you have to deal with the people you’re writing about.

“The other thing to consider, though, is that there are only a finite number of journalists covering the sport.” Meanwhile, the pool of outsiders tracking a sport is endless. And out of such a pool, Jazayerli said, some bright people are likely to emerge.

With all the attention now focused on Weiland, it would stand to reason that news media outlets, and maybe some front offices, will come calling for his help. But even if they do not, Jazayerli is already declaring victory.

“When everyone says, ‘Who could have predicted Jeremy Lin?’ Ed Weiland can raise his hand,” Jazayerli said. “I’m happy for him, and thrilled he’s getting the attention he deserves.”

The attention has somewhat overwhelmed Weiland, but he has yet to decide if he wants to pursue a more formal job as an analyst and the larger workload it would entail. For now, he said, he enjoys having plenty of time to enjoy Oregon summers.

“I really don’t know where to go from here,” Weiland said. “I’m pretty happy as it is.”