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CNN Talks To The FedEx Deliveryman Who Predicted Jeremy Lin’s Success

Over the last few days, Ed Weiland has achieved a level of recognition unusual for a FedEx deliveryman. That’s because in addition to his FedEx job, Weiland contributes to the site hoopsanalyst.com, and a couple years back, wrote this. Weiland, with a great deal more success than many, many people who followed, thought that a certain point guard out of Harvard currently sparking the Knicks to their best basketball of the season might just have a future in the NBA. Earlier today, CNN ran a segment where they talked to the man himself (Weiland, not Jeremy Lin):

Well, no one can accuse Weiland of having been changed by success. And it’s fun to look back at the numbers on which he predicted Lin might find NBA success – RSB40 (rebounds, steals and blocks per 40 minutes) is an interesting way to help measure athleticism/project a player, but even in the NBA, it’s clear that two-point field goal percentage is a critical aspect of Lin’s game, thanks in part to his many drives to the basket. (It’s worth pointing out that the first three games of his hot streak, Lin shot just 1-for-10 from three, but 28-40 on twos.)

Of course, it’s not totally accurate to say “the statheads were the only ones who saw Lin coming!” – for one thing, Weiland said himself he couldn’t have predicted Lin doing this much. For another, more than ever, statheads are the establishment. Take Rockets GM Daryl Morey. He has an MBA from MIT. He’s the co-chair of MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and has in general crunched more numbers than Leonhard Euler. And… he cut Jeremy Lin. Plenty of the stathead set didn’t realize what he could be, either.

But Weiland undeniably hit on Lin when few others did. And while one case doesn’t mean the power structure of basketball decision-making will be overturned – “small sample size,” Weiland himself might call it – it still means Weiland, without even seeing Lin play, beat almost everyone to the punch in spotting his talent. It’s the story of a virtual unknown bursting onto the scene out of nowhere, succeeding where more well-established pros couldn’t. Where have we heard that one before?