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The offseason is spent by most NBA teams to find better ways to run their sports operations. This is usually done by poring over player statistics. The San Antonio Spurs are no exception. With the help of SAS (News - Alert) Visual Data Discovery, an analytic advantage has been obtained by the decision makers of Spurs. Advanced analytics and exploratory data analysis with interactive data visualization are provided by SAS Visual Data Discovery. The Spurs can therefore analyze better, take faster decisions and present its analytic results more effectively.

In a release, Brian Pauga, Spurs’ Basketball operations assistant said, “We’re continually working to advance our performance, and analytics are critical to the equation. We relish the single view that SAS provides – pulling data from multiple sources to ease our analysis and reporting.”

The inherent limitations in spreadsheets, static graphs, charts and tabular reports are overcome by SAS Visual Data Discovery. A non-programming environment for exploratory data analysis is provided by the software’s point-and-click interface to SAS’ advanced analytics.

In a release, Craig Duncan, manager of Sports and Entertainment, SAS said, “SAS is a powerful competitive weapon for teams analyzing player performance with the goal of improving team performance. The challenge is that information can be hard to consolidate and even harder to analyze for useful insights. With game-changing solutions from SAS, organizations like the Spurs are using statistics to create a competitive advantage.”

Jeff Ma is the author of The House Advantage. In a conversation with NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West, MA agreed that a better way to deliver the most comprehensive analytics has been provided by SAS. The importance of sports statistics and letting the numbers guide decisions were being discussed by Ma and West. Frustrated with the way statistics has been used by sports team, they wanted to see the teams use the data more effectively.

Business analytics software and services are provided by SAS. The company is also a top independent vendor in the business intelligence market. SAS delivers innovative solutions within an integrated framework. Customers at more than 45,000 sites are helped by these solutions to improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. For more information, visit www.sas.com.