CHASING BASKETBALL HEAVEN Episode 3: Almost Vulcan

Summary

30 for 30 Podcasts

Chasing Basketball Heaven – Episode 3: Almost Vulcan

Release Date: July 22, 2025
Hosts: Rich Levine & Nicole Chiler
Featuring: Martin Manley (via archival audio), Dean Oliver, Kevin Pelton, Daryl Morey, Terry Hansen

---

Overview:

This episode explores the continued (and sometimes invisible) influence of Martin Manley—a pioneering but under-recognized figure in basketball analytics. It traces how Manley's early work on basketball statistics influenced the analytical revolution in the sport, sometimes directly, often indirectly, and ultimately shaped not only NBA team strategy but also the culture of online sports analysis. Beyond basketball, the episode also offers a poignant look at Manley’s personal quest for efficiency and meaning, weaving together his professional legacy with his struggles in relationships, work, and ultimately, mortality.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Manley’s Elusive Satisfaction and Professional Disappointments

• Happiness vs. Satisfaction:
  Martin Manley reflects on his lifelong focus on “satisfaction” over fleeting happiness.

  “I always recognized, perhaps more than the average person how important happiness is. I just was never able to find it for more than brief periods in my life.” – Martin Manley (00:03)

• Basketball Heaven’s Fading Impact:
  After a fleeting moment of recognition at the 1989 NBA All-Star weekend and three editions of his analytics-heavy book Basketball Heaven, Manley’s work failed to gain mainstream traction, leading to a sense of disappointment among his collaborators and himself (02:08–02:39).

• Manley’s Self-Assessment:

  “I am 100% confident that I was ahead of my time, too far ahead.” – Martin Manley (01:42)

2. The NBA’s Resistance and Slow Embrace of Analytics

• NBA’s Big Man Era:
  Throughout the 1990s, the NBA focused on dominating centers (Olajuwon, Ewing, Robinson, Shaq), largely ignoring the efficiency of three-point shooting that Manley championed (04:28–04:56).

• Gradual Evolution:
  Occasional outliers hinted at analytics’ future (e.g., Jordan’s six threes in the 1992 Finals (05:08), Phoenix Suns’ 1993 emphasis on the three). However, teams and the league as a whole only incrementally adjusted, even moving the three-point line in (06:57–07:29), usually with mixed or underwhelming results.

3. The Emergence of Basketball Analytics—A New Generation

• Passing the Torch:
  In the early 2000s, young basketball minds like Kevin Pelton discovered Manley’s Basketball Heaven in college libraries (09:20) and found inspiration, setting out to build a community of analytics thinkers online.

  “I found people, I found my tribe.” – Kevin Pelton (12:16)

• The Yahoo Group Era:
  Dean Oliver led an online group where future analytics leaders debated and refined statistical models, recognizing—but also critiquing—Manley’s contributions:

  “He was addressing questions. I remember that. ... It’s not as deep as really what I wanted them to be.” – Dean Oliver (13:18–13:33)

• The Bill James Letter:
  Dean wrote to Bill James, questioning his endorsement of Manley’s book. James’s response underscored the importance of action over criticism:

  “If you think you can do better than he did, for Christ’s sake, do it. It doesn’t have any value for... you to say you could do it better.” – Bill James letter, read by Dean Oliver (14:37)

4. Dean Oliver and the Analytics Revolution

• Basketball on Paper (2002):
  Dean Oliver achieved what Manley dreamed: authoring the influential Basketball on Paper, which broke the game down into possessions and created new statistical frameworks (16:22–17:41).

  “I remember figuring it out from what I had written down on paper and like, oh, there’s a logic here ... I knew something at that moment that no one else in the world knew.” – Dean Oliver (16:39)

• Breaking Barriers:
  Oliver became a consultant for NBA teams, using methods far beyond Manley’s early work, enabled by technology and new data sources (18:09–18:40).

5. Daryl Morey and Moriball: Analytics Goes Mainstream

• From Consultant to Decision Maker:
  Daryl Morey—who claims not to know of Manley—took analytics further, running the Houston Rockets with a stats-first ideology (“Moriball”) (19:14–20:07).

  “Analytics is like gravity. It just happens.” – Daryl Morey (19:14)

• The Spread Offense:
  Under Morey, efficiency rules: threes and layups dominate, midrange shots are erased (20:39–21:27).

  “With Moriball, the geography of the court is the same, but where the players position themselves is drastically different.” – Nicole Chiler (20:39)

  “You’re going to get shoved to whatever is most efficient.” – Daryl Morey (24:42)

• Analytical Unpopularity:
  Many fans viewed this style as “ugly”, missing the past's variety and artistry (24:24–24:29).

  “Fans found basketball played at its most efficient to be, simply put, ugly.” – Nicole Chiler (24:24)

• The Forgotten Pioneer:
  Notably, Morey—even as the leading analytics exec in the NBA—cannot place Martin Manley:

  “I’m actually struggling to even find Martin Manley when I look on the Internet.” – Daryl Morey (25:07)

6. Manley’s Quest for Efficiency Turns Inward

• From Basketball to Life Optimization:
  After his basketball writing days, Manley becomes obsessed with maximizing efficiency in daily existence (40:07–41:40):

  • Meticulous cost calculations on food
  • Strict meal budgets
  • Experimenting with extreme sleep schedules

  “The more comfortable Martin became in his own efficient world, the more fearful he became of life on the outside, a world he couldn’t control.” – Nicole Chiler (41:57)

• Online Solace, Offline Isolation:
  Martin thrives in online communities but grows increasingly isolated from the outside world (42:23–42:42).

  “Martin’s life was wildly efficient, but it was also incredibly exhausting and lonely. Rootless.” – Rich Levine (42:42)

7. Personal Relationships: Difficulties and Estrangement

• Romantic Detachment:
  Manley’s pursuit of love is intertwined with his analytic compulsions—evidenced by his crossword-puzzle marriage proposal and his relationship’s decline once routine replaces novelty (32:56–34:22).

  “Do you think once, you know, you exchanged rings that, like his job was done? Yes.” – Terry Hansen (34:45)

• Domestic Disconnection:
  Endless statistical obsessions (e.g., weather prediction competitions) and nocturnal habits put strains on his marriage and family life, eventually leading to divorce (35:05–36:07).

8. Manley’s Final Calculations: Planning Departure

• Ultimate Efficiency – The Planned Goodbye:
  In the episode’s haunting close, Manley describes his suicide preparations as the “most organized goodbye in history,” seeking to make sense, and perhaps connection, out of his own departure (43:15–43:47).

  “You will rarely get any details for why a person committed suicide, but that won’t be the case with me.” – Martin Manley (43:27)

  The episode ends with an urgent reminder to seek help if you or others are in crisis.

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I almost never use the word happy...instead, I use the word satisfied, which is more of a statement of fact...the issue is less about more than it is about not having less.”
  — Martin Manley (00:03)

• “He was addressing questions. ... It’s not as deep as really what I wanted them to be.”
  — Dean Oliver, on Manley’s book (13:18–13:33)

• “If you think you can do better than he did, for Christ’s sake, do it.”
  — Bill James, read by Dean Oliver (14:37)

• “He was not necessarily the most friendly in his response. He was basically talking about him in ways way ahead of me and everything.”
  — Dean Oliver, on Manley’s reply (15:38)

• “Analytics is like gravity. It just happens.”
  — Daryl Morey (19:14)

• “My New Year’s resolution is to explore the idea of committing suicide sooner rather than later...”
  — Martin Manley, teaser for the next episode (44:19)

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:03–02:39: Manley’s early work, disappointment, and the end of Basketball Heaven
• 03:56–07:57: NBA’s resistance to analytics; the rise and (failed) encouragement of three-point shooting
• 09:00–12:16: The next generation: Pelton and the Yahoo Group analytics community
• 13:12–15:10: Dean Oliver critiques Manley; Bill James’s advice
• 16:22–18:09: Dean Oliver’s Basketball on Paper and the NBA consultancy path
• 19:09–25:07: Daryl Morey’s “Moriball”, impact on NBA, and Manley’s invisibility
• 27:14–36:07: Manley’s personal life—marriage, quirks, divorce
• 37:30–42:42: Manley’s obsessive efficiency, solitary blogging, and online life
• 43:15–43:47: Discussion of Manley’s decision to plan his own end
• 44:13–45:04: Teaser for the next episode

---

Notable Episode Characteristics & Tone

• Reflective, analytic, occasionally wry: The podcast acknowledges the absurd humor of Manley’s all-consuming efficiency and social missteps, as well as the tragedy within his relentless self-optimization.
• Empathetic: The hosts speak respectfully of Manley while not shying from the toll his obsessions took on himself and others.

---

Conclusion

“Almost Vulcan” draws a sharp line through recent basketball history, connecting forgotten pioneers like Martin Manley with the legends of modern NBA analytics. Through the voices of those inspired (and sometimes irritated) by him, the episode acknowledges Manley’s insight, his failures, and his invisible legacy. More personally, it’s a meditation on obsession, loneliness, and the costs of a life built for efficiency rather than connection.

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 988lifeline.org.

Transcript

[Martin Manley]

I always recognized, perhaps more than the average person how important happiness is. I just was never able to find it for more than brief periods in my life. And so I almost never use the word happy, I guess because I identify it as an emotion. Instead, I use the word satisfied, which is more of a statement of fact, something that can be measured or Quantified, like x equals 4 satisfies the equation of 2 plus 2 equals x. some point, the issue is less about more than it is about not having less. Michael Jordan has talked about the joy of his first championship. But by the third championship, it had become more relief. Happiness had become the absence of misery, the misery of losing.

[Rich Levine]

Success didn't come for Martin Manley, at least not like he originally planned.

[Nicole Chiler]

His moment at the 1989 NBA All Star weekend. A few minutes in the national TV spotlight had come and gone in Basketball Heaven. His book and the argument for more three point shots never took off.

[Rich Levine]

In 1990, after the third edition of Basketball Heaven, Martin and Doubleday parted ways. And Martin determined that the third edition would be his last.

[Martin Manley]

Basketball Heaven is when I first made an impact on others with respect to sports. And so the experience will always be special. I am 100% confident that I was ahead of my time, too far ahead.

[Rich Levine]

He dedicated years to producing a first of its kind book series about the

[Nicole Chiler]

NBA, a plea for a more efficient brand of basketball, which now lined the

[Rich Levine]

walls of his garage. Kevin Mehar, Martin's assistant on the book, said the feeling was palpable. It was more a disappointment. It was a lot of time and effort, but, yeah, I'd say it was a disappointment. You know, I can't remember how many books we printed, but, you know, there were still stacks of them in his garage. And, you know, and then it was like, okay, this was fun. Now I gotta go pursue a career.

[Nicole Chiler]

Martin had had a mission to become the Bill James of basketball, a sports analytics visionary. But with his dream effectively retired, Martin began pursuing something bigger. A way to live life, maybe not to its fullest, but to peak efficiency.

[Rich Levine]

And as far as the basketball world knew or cared, Martin had simply disappeared. But that didn't mean his ideas vanished

[Nicole Chiler]

from 30 for 30 podcasts. I'm Rich Levine.

[Rich Levine]

I'm Nicole Chiler, and this is Chasing Basketball Heaven, episode three, Almost Vulcan. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now you Call it an early present for next year.

[Nicole Chiler]

What do you have to lose?

[Rich Levine]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time

[Nicole Chiler]

50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy See

[Rich Levine]

terms

[Nicole Chiler]

In the early 1990s, as Martin Manley was putting basketball heaven behind him, the NBA still didn't get it. Despite the lovely example set by shooters like Brian Taylor and Dale Ellis and some very simple math, the three point line was still mostly an afterthought. Meanwhile, the league got slower, less efficient. Kareem Abdul Jabbar had retired and another generation of big men took his place to dominate the decade.

[Rich Levine]

Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson,

[Nicole Chiler]

Shaquille o'. Neal.

[Rich Levine]

They were the icons of the era, These seven footers who played in the paint.

[Nicole Chiler]

Even the two guard who beat them all, a guy named Michael Jeffrey Jordan, did most of his work inside the arc.

[Rich Levine]

There was one time, though, in the 1992 finals, Jordan hit six threes and a half and it was such an incomprehensible outlier that they put it in a Gatorade commercial.

[Martin Manley]

Here's Jordan for three.

[Rich Levine]

Yes, I'm sure many of you are picturing the Jordan shrug right now.

[Nicole Chiler]

In 1993, there were more clues to the power of the three. That season, the Phoenix Suns led the league in three point attempts and overall scoring. Their star, Charles Barkley, finally got the manly approved memo.

[Martin Manley]

Barkley, he hasn't had a 3.

[Nicole Chiler]

Does now. Barkley took, wait for it, three triples a game that year. 3. Barkley went on to win the MVP and the Suns made it all the way to the finals. There they faced the Bulls, but lost in six games, thanks in large part to that Chicago teamwork that Martin had begged for in basketball heaven, you remember how Michael Jordan just needs to trust his teammates.

[Rich Levine]

Down two in the final seconds of Game six, Jordan brings the ball up but is met with an immediate full court press by Suns guard Kevin Johnson.

[Nicole Chiler]

And because this is the 90s, the Suns are trying to prevent Jordan from driving to the hole and scoring the tying bucket.

[Rich Levine]

Jordan passes Pippen, Pippen drives. He draws Horace Grant's defender. He dishes to the big man on the left block. Grant immediately fires the ball out to John Paxson for the three.

[Martin Manley]

Here's Paxton for three. Yes, the Bulls take a one point lead at Phoenix.

[Rich Levine]

Paxton was open by about 20ft, Jordan had 33 points. But with the game on the line, he trusted his teammates. The formula for success, Martin had written years before.

[Nicole Chiler]

But even after a championship winning play that was peak efficiency, the league still didn't take proper advantage of the three point shot. In fact, teams were playing even slower and scoring steadily dropped. So the following year, 1994, the NBA moved the three point line in by almost two feet. They were begging someone, please, please shoot more threes. And to a certain extent, it worked.

[Rich Levine]

In 1994, NBA teams took an average of 9.9 threes per game. In 1995, with the shorter line, attempts jumped to 15.3. But despite the bump, league scoring still fell and the big men were still the apex predators, a team's ace in the hole and threes still seen as a roll of the dice with centers dominating the the Admiral.

[Nicole Chiler]

I think you're talking about David Robinson, who's seven foot one.

[Rich Levine]

I was. He won the MVP in 1995. Hakeem Olajuwon, seven feet, won two titles in 94 and 95. Patrick Ewing, seven feet. Thank you, Richard could have stolen the 94 crown, as Knicks fans will tell you, if shooter John Starks had just hit a few threes in game seven. Meanwhile, Dikembe Mutombo, 7 foot 2. Off the top of your head, you know that at the 1994 Denver Nuggets still haunts Sonics fans, becoming the first eight seed to upset a number one. In 1997, the league moved the three point line back to where it is today. Like we said, that shorter arc didn't have its intended effect on scoring. Pace and spacing also suffered. Meanwhile, as Martin and the three were both stuck between the past and the future, an interesting thing was happening in the world of basketball analytics. Without Martin even knowing it, he was at the center of it. Whether that was through fate or luck, your beliefs are up to you.

[Nicole Chiler]

A new crop of stat obsessives were trying to bend basketball towards where they thought it could go, one jumpstop at a time.

[Rich Levine]

One afternoon in the early 2000s in Seattle, Washington, a young man picked up a copy of Basketball Heaven and without realizing it, also picked up Martin's torch.

[Kevin Pelton]

So the UW library had a copy of it. When I was a student at the

[Nicole Chiler]

University of Washington, that kid was Kevin Pelton, a college student and basketball fan who fell in love with the game while listening to Seattle Supersonics radio broadcasts in the early 90s.

[Kevin Pelton]

And I had a lot of time to read at that point on Buses I was taking to and from campus and to and from my internship.

[Rich Levine]

And that's where he found himself drawn into the world of basketball heaven.

[Kevin Pelton]

It was definitely intriguing to me, even though obviously it was already a dozen years old probably by the point I was reading it.

[Nicole Chiler]

And what was intriguing, just the way he was thinking and the.

[Kevin Pelton]

Yeah, I mean again, there wasn't a lot of history when I was starting out. So I first kind of stumbled onto this, I would say the summer of 2000, started reading Rob Nair on ESPN.com through that found Baseball Prospectus and started asking hey, who's doing this for basketball? Which the answer was not a lot of people at that point, but Dave hearing Martin Manley, they were key figures and I was going to track down anything that existed. I was so passionate about learning about the history of the field.

[Nicole Chiler]

Pelton went all in. He graduated from UW in 2004 and by then was already covering the SuperSonics for the team's website. By 2009 he graduated to covering the NBA and WNBA for ESPN.

[Rich Levine]

You may have heard of it. It's a sports company based in Bristol, Connecticut.

[Nicole Chiler]

We now welcome in ESPN senior writer

[Rich Levine]

Kevin Pelton to talk about this NBA. Pelton has spent more than two decades now studying and covering the NBA.

[Kevin Pelton]

Daryl Morey traded for Lowry in Houston, then sent him to Toronto, got one.

[Rich Levine]

What makes him unique in that world is that he writes about the league through a mathematical lens.

[Nicole Chiler]

Kevin's work has helped build sports analytics into a way of understanding basketball's potential. A slow, steady way to put Martin like ideas into the heads of countless basketball fans. A new fluency with analytics that for diehards like us can feel like it's always been there.

[Rich Levine]

Kevin of course wouldn't say these things. What he would say is that the person who really brought basketball analytics to the next level was the next person we want to introduce you to. Kevin first met Dean Oliver online on a Yahoo Group.

[Kevin Pelton]

It's like you find the cave and there are all the hieroglyphics written. Or maybe better than that because it was like, oh, there's other people out here doing this.

[Nicole Chiler]

For those of you who have never used Dial up, a Yahoo Group was an early online discussion board. It was like participating in the subreddit or a message board except every comment was transmitted over email.

[Rich Levine]

But for our purposes, the Yahoo Group was basketball analytics. First town hall. A place for like minded stat heads to meet and exchange ideas and challenge theories.

[Kevin Pelton]

I found people, I found my tribe.

[Rich Levine]

Actual discussions from these primitive days in February 2001 does hack a shack work? What rule changes improve the quality of the game? Why has Charlotte had such a good record without Derrick Coleman in the lineup and a mediocre one with him in

[Nicole Chiler]

a Caltech grad named Dean Oliver ran the group. At the time, he was just looking for a few people who were thinking about the game like he was. Folks smart enough to ask good questions but naive enough to explore some crazy ideas.

[Rich Levine]

Dean had majored in engineering and unlike a lot of data obsessives, could actually hoop. He played point guard at Caltech and he was busy working on his own book to change the game that put

[Nicole Chiler]

him in competition with Martin Manley and basketball Heaven. We caught up with Dean in the occasionally noisy back lobby of the Embassy Suites Las Vegas during Summer League 2023.

[Rich Levine]

He said he had taken in Martin's ideas and was less than impressed with his book.

[Dean Oliver]

It was casual. It was definitely casual. He was addressing questions. I remember that. I didn't. There were more superficial slanders. I am really trying to understand how basketball works and I don't think that's what his goal necessarily was.

[Nicole Chiler]

What do you think his goal was?

[Dean Oliver]

I think his goal was to kind of do the fan perspective, who is. Who are the best players and things like that, and just kind of the superficial things that they talk about on broadcast a little bit. I respect a lot of that, but it's only. It's not as deep as really what I wanted them to be.

[Nicole Chiler]

For Dean, the North Star was Martin's North Star. Bill James. What Bill James had done for baseball analytics, that was what Dean wanted to do for basketball.

[Rich Levine]

There was just one small problem that Dean couldn't let go of. Why had his hero, the real deal Bill James, co signed on a book that Dean felt was lame?

[Dean Oliver]

When his book came out, I wrote a letter to Bill James and he said, why did you endorse the book? Because I didn't think it was very good.

[Rich Levine]

In short time, Dean received a letter back from James. All the years later, Dean still has this letter. He actually read it for us.

[Dean Oliver]

I wrote a cover quote from Martin Manley because it is my policy to help and encourage people who want to do this kind of stuff. As a first effort, his first Basketball Heaven is a lot better than my first baseball abstract. You can't compare his first effort to my 10th or 12th. If you think you can do better than he did, for Christ's sake, do it doesn't have any value for me or anybody else for you to say you could do it better. Thank you, Bill.

[Rich Levine]

After getting a kick in the pants from Bill James, the humble Dean wrote to Martin with some ideas and asking for help.

[Dean Oliver]

It was cordial. I was definitely actually trying to understand how he was able to get published and how he went through that process. And I felt like I had things that were complimentary that could help, which

[Nicole Chiler]

displays a level of confidence, obsession, and intensity that maybe Martin could appreciate. Right.

[Rich Levine]

He did not.

[Dean Oliver]

He was not necessarily the most friendly in his response. He was basically talking about him in ways way ahead of me and everything.

[Rich Levine]

Being influential doesn't always work the way you want it to. Martin was going to influence Dean, just not as Martin hoped.

[Nicole Chiler]

Faced with a snooty response from Martin and some tough love from their shared idol, Dean had all the fuel he needed.

[Dean Oliver]

Bill, I don't know if he hated me at the time. He obviously didn't know me, but it was pushing me. And I think I read it like, okay, I need to do better. I need to do better than him.

[Nicole Chiler]

It took Dean nearly 14 years, but he finally met Bill James Challenge and delivered the answer to how he could best Martin. In 2002, Dean wrote a book, People actually do remember Basketball on Paper, widely considered the seminal take on basketball analytics.

[Dean Oliver]

I said, well, just give me a piece of paper and let me write down what's going on. And I wrote down how the ball went from one player to the next. And I remember figuring it out from what I had written down on paper and like, oh, there's a logic here that just all these alternating possessions and how you can estimate them from basic stats and everything like that, that is when I realized I knew something at that moment that no one else in the world knew.

[Rich Levine]

The foundational idea of the book was to break the game down into a series of possessions, a possession being a team's turn with the ball. By examining these component parts, Dean opened up a new way to look at the sport as a whole. Sure, a traditional box score can tell you that one team beat another, but by looking at how effectively teams used

[Nicole Chiler]

each possession, which gives us stats like points per possession, pace, defensive rating, you

[Rich Levine]

can start to understand why one team beat another.

[Nicole Chiler]

It took the entire field a giant step forward. And for his work, Dean landed a paid consulting gig with the Seattle SuperSonics.

[Rich Levine]

The lovely green and gold.

[Nicole Chiler]

You know, you actually won me over with that performance. Thank you. It is officially gold now in my book, but I can't emphasize this enough. While Martin's book got the conversation started, people were still thinking about the Game in straight lines, basketball on paper, added dimensions.

[Rich Levine]

So why else did Dean succeed while Martin vanished into obscurity? In fairness to Martin, Dean was 16 years younger, so his research was aided by more capable computers and even an early form of the Internet. He didn't have to beg the league office for random box scores from Milwaukee like Martin did. And so Dean became a revolutionary. He inspired a ton of people to look at the game with as much data as possible, and if that data was incomplete, find new ways to collect it.

[Nicole Chiler]

Martin Manley had written Basketball Heaven, hoping his ideas about stats would influence how the game is played. Dean was the first modern numbers guy to receive a paycheck from an NBA team. But he was still only a consultant, a voice traditional decision makers only tolerated. The first math man to call shots from the top of an NBA org chart was Daryl Morey. If you're a modern fan, Daryl Morey is possibly the first name you think of when you consider basketball analytics.

[Rich Levine]

Like Martin, he's a man with full confidence in his ideas and how he sees the game.

[Daryl Morey]

Yeah, I have strong opinions on that. If you're mad how analytics is taking your sport, you should be mad at the rules, like, because analytics is like gravity. It just happens.

[Nicole Chiler]

Yep, Darrell does have some strong basketball opinions.

[Rich Levine]

And he rode those strong opinions all the way to the front office of the Houston Rockets. Which leads us to April 3, 2006.

[Nicole Chiler]

This date marks a seismic moment in basketball analytics. After three seasons as senior VP for the Celtics, Daryl Morey was hired as the Rockets assistant GM the following spring. At 34 years old, he was named general manager.

[Daryl Morey]

I think we were really working on the real building blocks, basically starting with the first level below points, which is possessions, then efficiency with each possession.

[Nicole Chiler]

Daryl Morey was a true believer in the power of stats, and suddenly he was calling the shots.

[Daryl Morey]

You can create an efficiency advantage either through field goal percentage.

[Rich Levine]

With earthquakes, we use the Richter scale, which we're sure Martin admires for its clean simplicity. One to ten, easy to understand. A one is a microquake. It happens all the time. You don't even feel them. For the 10, everything breaks, and the landscape will never be the same.

[Nicole Chiler]

In terms of its impact on the NBA, Darrell's approach is a nine. It even has its own nickname, Moriball, a play on Michael Lewis. Moneyball. With Moriball, the geography of the court is the same, but where the players position themselves is drastically different. Now everyone's spread out, the paint is empty, and there are seemingly two plays. One drive to the hoop for a closer Higher percentage shot or two, drive to the hoop, draw the defense and kick it out for a more efficient three point shot. Over and over again, the mid range jump shot eradicated. This is a basketball strategy designed through the prism of statistics.

[Daryl Morey]

So basically all analytics and data do is whatever the rules of the game are, it's going to squeeze out every last bit of winning probability and efficiency.

[Rich Levine]

To maximize his system, Darrell traded for James Harden, the perfect Mori ball superstar with elite passing, driving and three point shooting.

[Martin Manley]

And James Harden with his ninth assist

[Rich Levine]

of the game and he's almost got

[Martin Manley]

a triple double in his first performance. James Harden.

[Nicole Chiler]

But he also brought in pull players like Chuck Hayes, an undrafted undersized center out of the University of Kentucky with a comically awkward jump shot.

[Daryl Morey]

If you want something funny, go to YouTube and look up Chuck Hayes free throw.

[Nicole Chiler]

We've done this and highly recommend it. Hayes is at the foul line and starts his motion on what looks like a normal free throw. But then just as he's supposed to release the ball, he doesn't. Uh, oh, oh my God. Instead he falls forward and fires an off balance line drive at the rim.

[Dean Oliver]

That's one of those you don't even want to watch.

[Daryl Morey]

Look at this. If you went to Kentucky at the time to scout them, you'd have to have a really good eye to see a six four and a half center who can't release the ball and say that guy is going to be a good player in the NBA. But the data was pretty overwhelming when he was on the court. So he's like almost the plus minus poster child.

[Nicole Chiler]

It was the same concept Martin Manley was writing about nearly 20 years earlier. Just because a player doesn't score a lot of points doesn't mean he's pointless in this case. Darrell quickly came to believe that this awkward, undersized Chuck Hayes was more valuable than former all star power forward Juwan Howard. Darrell shared this opinion with the Rockets head coach.

[Daryl Morey]

I remember talking to Jeff Van Gundy. We were basically saying, hey Jeff, Juwan was a great player, but this kid Chuck is better. And he was like, oh, but Chuck can't shoot. And we're like, yeah, that's good. He won't take any of those terrible mid range shots.

[Rich Levine]

Eventually Darrell hired offensive minded coaches like Rick Adelman and Mike d'. Antoni. He assembled an organization built from the ground up to play efficiently. The Mori ball strategy is at the core of just about every offense you see in the league today.

[Nicole Chiler]

But even if this style of play was effective, and again, clearly more Efficient. There was one snag. Many fans hated it.

[Martin Manley]

Has analytics ruined the NBA? The NBA has evolved and it might

[Dean Oliver]

be ruining the game of basketball.

[Rich Levine]

Teams used to play to the strengths of their players and have their own unique play style.

[Dean Oliver]

Pretty much everybody plays the same way.

[Martin Manley]

Running up and down the court, shooting threes, or if you get a wide open layup for a duck. And until they lower the competitive advantage

[Dean Oliver]

to be gained from shooting and making more threes. And this is a problem that is here to stay.

[Nicole Chiler]

Fans found basketball played at its most efficient to be, simply put, ugly.

[Rich Levine]

An offense built around threes and layups. An offense based on principles of efficiency. The short shots go in more, the long ones get you more points. Not a lot of variety. But that's not Darrell's problem.

[Daryl Morey]

You're going to get shoved to whatever is most efficient. You know, three pointers shouldn't be worth 50% more than the other shots on the floor. And until somehow that's changed, teams are going to keep shooting more threes.

[Nicole Chiler]

And that's not our problem either. Our problem is this Martin Manley. Manley.

[Daryl Morey]

I'm actually struggling to even find Martin Manley when I look on the Internet.

[Nicole Chiler]

It's sort of a big deal that Daryl Morey, who in many ways is the true example of success in basketball analytics, doesn't even know who Martin is.

[Daryl Morey]

Sorry, did I ruin the podcast already?

[Nicole Chiler]

No, Darrell, that's our job.

[Rich Levine]

You might be curious after all the writing Martin did about the three pointer and efficiency, why people like Darrell didn't know who he was or what happened to him after publishing Basketball Heaven. Dean Oliver, who wrote the book Basketball on Paper, certainly was.

[Dean Oliver]

I do remember wondering what happened to Martin, but he didn't really have a big footprint and so I couldn't find him.

[Nicole Chiler]

Did you hear about Martin when everything kind of went down with him like at the end of his life?

[Dean Oliver]

I actually don't even know the full story,

[Rich Levine]

so he told Dean the full story.

[Nicole Chiler]

Man, the look on his face.

[Dean Oliver]

I have never heard any thought like that. I mean that's. It's almost Vulcan. Like from Star Trek, right?

[Rich Levine]

Vulcans are a species who operate by cold logic and reason. Mr. Spock, half Vulcan, was the cool customer who balanced out the hot headed Captain Kirk. Martin and Spock would have made a hell of a pair of real life relationships were trickier. More after the break, My day kicks off with a refreshing Celsius energy drink. Then straight to the gym, pre K pickup back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius. Gotta keep the lights on when the three alarm hits. I'm ready. Celsius Live Fit. Go grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate [e-mail].

[Nicole Chiler]

After Basketball heaven in the mid-1990s, Martin Manley was back on the ground working for millionaire Joe, his old buddy and Basketball Heaven financier. He also returned to normal human waking hours in that beautiful Topeka home with his beautiful Topeka wife. It's the way to live, but not the life Martin wanted. The atmosphere was changed. Martin and Chris might have had their moment, but it quickly became clear that the dream was over.

[Martin Manley]

Chris and I drifted apart. I take 100% of the blame. She was a very committed person and would do anything for me. It's not intended to be an excuse, but my mom and dad were essentially both only children. They really didn't understand, nor were they able to pass on the idea of family. Both parents and my two siblings were all relatively individualistic people. We lived out in the sticks, many miles from the nearest town. Either learn how to entertain yourself or you'd go crazy. I probably did a little bit of both, as it turns out. But one thing is for sure, I learned how to exist in my own world.

[Rich Levine]

Now you might think that Martin being in his own efficiency obsessed world would mean that he wanted to be alone, maybe even needed to be a loner. But here's a little something we've learned about Martin. He liked to be alone, just not by himself. Deep down, he loved love.

[Nicole Chiler]

He loved sappy duets.

[Martin Manley]

I would say that other than my obsession with James Taylor, the duets were about the only other thing that moved me musically in the 1980s and 1990s, and so I started collecting them. This might seem like it wouldn't be that hard to do, but in those days, even researching what duets had been on the charts or slipped through the cracks and by who and how to get a copy, etc. Was very difficult.

[Rich Levine]

Love drives us all to strange places. Martin was no exception, utterly unafraid to go wherever it took him.

[Martin Manley]

My all time favorite film is Little Shop of Whores, 1986. Bobby Jr. Will be the sweetest thing

[Rich Levine]

in the whole wide world.

[Martin Manley]

There are many reasons why it's funny, it's clever, it's got great music and it can't be squeezed into a particular genre. It's weird.

[Nicole Chiler]

Of course, his favorite movie could never beat Shawshank or the Godfather.

[Martin Manley]

There probably aren't a thousand people in the world that would list it as their all Time Favorite movie, but I'm one of them.

[Rich Levine]

A cult classic, Little Shop of Horrors is the story of a flower shop employee, Seymour, who discovers that one of his plants is sentient, carnivorous, and hungry for human blood. Oh, and human love. Honestly, it makes sense that Martin could view that movie and much of life through the eyes of shadow, shy, awkward Seymour. Little Shop of Horror's scrappy plant lover.

[Nicole Chiler]

So Martin got back into the dating game, back on the market, wooing local

[Rich Levine]

singles with his poetry on matchmaker.com Morning

[Martin Manley]

comes soon and I pry open my eyes Though your face I can still plainly see the Sandman and Tooth Fairy have said their goodbyes but your face still lingers with me. Yes, Mary is pretty and Jacqueline is fine and Connie is beautiful too but Sheena was tops till the second in time I clicked on Kathy242.

[Nicole Chiler]

Hot damn. We're not sure how that particular slice of eloquence worked out for Martin, but soon enough he met his match, an

[Rich Levine]

early 30s divorcee and mother of two young girls, Terry Hansen.

[Terry Hansen]

Well, I thought he was nice looking, but he had a glamour shot picture of him in a tuxedo, which was kind of a turn off, but I thought I'd give him a shot.

[Nicole Chiler]

We've seen this photo and girl, it's a glamour shot.

[Rich Levine]

Like your high school prom picture is a glamour shot. His collar is bent crookedly over what is clearly a clip on. His tufted hair is parted broadly down the middle like when a cow tramples its way through a cornfield.

[Nicole Chiler]

There is a separate picture after an outfit change, of course, where Martin looks like an absolute stud.

[Rich Levine]

The man was capable of both.

[Nicole Chiler]

So dichotomous.

[Rich Levine]

But he had no one to tell him. Maybe don't stop to rent a tux. At least no one he would ask for advice. Otherwise he wouldn't have done this. On that first date with Terry, he

[Terry Hansen]

brought a photo album on the date to show me all the work that he'd done on his house, like he was trying to impress me.

[Rich Levine]

At least he didn't bring a stud finder and hold it to his chest.

[Nicole Chiler]

Beep, beep beep.

[Rich Levine]

Ooh, I found one. Still, Martin found a way.

[Terry Hansen]

Okay, this sounds terrible. He actually spent the night. We didn't sleep together. I had a pull out couch and he lived in Topeka and we'd been up so I let him sleep on the couch overnight. But we went to a movie the next day. It was There's Something About Mary and we're watching the movie in the part where Brett Favre comes in. I said, brett Favre? And he said, will you marry me?

[Rich Levine]

Less than a year later, Martin made his proposal official.

[Martin Manley]

There were times when I was actually a romantic or the Roman. Even being romantic was tempered by my analytical way of thinking. In this particular case, that made what I did in my proposal to Terry special, at least in my opinion. I decided to do it via a crossword puzzle.

[Terry Hansen]

We were going down to the Lake of the Ozarks, I think was camping with some friends. So on the way there, I was doing the crossword.

[Martin Manley]

Terry liked doing crossword puzzles because she was good at them. She was always smart, getting her degree and MBA while working full time, straight A's. She then got her cpa. Anyway, I made up a crossword puzzle that I knew she would want to do. I made it the size of USA TODAY's paper and put it in as an insert.

[Terry Hansen]

I knew that he had made it up in what he was asking because it was a pretty simple. It was too easy. But I didn't, I didn't let on, you know, I let him think he was surprising me.

[Martin Manley]

So the insert showed the puzzle filled in with the answers. TLW Will you marry me, mam? Foolishly, she said yes.

[Nicole Chiler]

Honestly, I'd have said yes too. I love a good crossword puzzle. But after they tied the knot, it didn't take long for Rico Suave from the Glamour shots to rather abruptly reveal his true self.

[Terry Hansen]

I just remember him losing interest in our relationship pretty soon after we got married. And that.

[Rich Levine]

That was the hardest thing you said once you completed a project, he moved on to the next thing pretty quick. Do you think once, you know, you exchanged rings that, like his job was done? Yes.

[Terry Hansen]

Yep. I remember him being different on the honeymoon. His focus changed.

[Rich Levine]

It was little things, Martin things.

[Nicole Chiler]

For instance, instead of dinners at Outback Steakhouse or trips to the movies, Martin was now more concerned with, oh yes,

[Terry Hansen]

the weather, the weather. He got into deciding, I guess, who was the best weather forecaster. So every night he watched like three different stations to see their predictions and then compared how close they were to the. So like, we, we couldn't go out anywhere because he had to be home, because we didn't, you know, we didn't have a DVR back then.

[Nicole Chiler]

And he's doing it for no other reason that just it interested him.

[Rich Levine]

So you.

[Nicole Chiler]

We can't go out to dinner tonight because I need to be home to see the weather report.

[Terry Hansen]

Well, we could go, but we have to be back at, you know, six

[Nicole Chiler]

or whatever he Also fell back into unhealthy sleeping habits.

[Terry Hansen]

We lived daylight hours and the kids always had to be quiet because he was sleeping all day and then he'd be up all night. I did start to resent that. And in fact, I started charging him rent that last year because he was just a roommate. I mean, we never saw him. We weren't sleeping together.

[Nicole Chiler]

Finally, in 2004, after less than five years of marriage, Terry filed for divorce.

[Terry Hansen]

You know, he had changed. He wasn't fun anymore.

[Martin Manley]

No matter how much I like the idea of a second chance marriage, especially with kids, I was still largely a fish out of water. I tried to be moldable and God knows Terry tried to mold me. But at some point, I think I rebelled against it because I just felt I was losing my identity.

[Nicole Chiler]

A lot had changed in Martin's life. Now, on the other side of 50 years old, the dream of a basketball heaven to be the Bill James of basketball was long over. So was his relationship with Terry. He was lost. So in true Martin fashion, he found some things to hold onto, like really hold onto.

[Martin Manley]

When I was about 54, I started wearing a fedora all the time. Okay, I didn't wear one when I slept at night, and I didn't wear one in Church. Otherwise, 100% of the time, even when home alone, they just became a part of who I was. There are plenty of people whom I've met over the past six years and have gotten to know that have never seen me without one.

[Rich Levine]

With a new look, locked down, he turned back to the one thing that was always there when he needed it. Work.

[Martin Manley]

I decided I needed to do something that I would enjoy and I took a job with the Kansas City Star sports department responsible for statistics. Pretty much all I had to do to get the job was hand them a copy of one of my books.

[Rich Levine]

For seven years, Martin crunched the numbers as the Star's statistics editor, bringing his very Martin like work ethic to writing analytics inspired content about the Royals and Chiefs. For Upon Further Review, a sports blog on Kansas City.com I was a workaholic.

[Martin Manley]

I never missed a day. I rarely even took my vacation. I never took breaks, never stopped to eat during a shift. Worked my butt off pretty much every minute I was there because I just wanted to work.

[Nicole Chiler]

Ceaseless toil. Don't threaten Martin Manley with a good time.

[Martin Manley]

Basically, I lived, ate, drank and slept when I had time. Kansas City Sports, Kansas City Star and Upon Further Review, what life?

[Nicole Chiler]

Finally, all that work became too much of a good thing.

[Martin Manley]

The amount I alone was responsible for just kept increasing and increasing. I could only work 70 hours a week for so long before I just couldn't take another second of it literally.

[Nicole Chiler]

So Martin quit.

[Martin Manley]

My Last second was February 6th around 11:55pm I wrote my final article on UFR.

[Nicole Chiler]

That night he was finally free from the shackles of work. So what did Martin do? He created more work filling the void by fanatically writing for a new sports blog of his own. He called it Sports in Review.

[Martin Manley]

Took about a month to get Sports in Review up and running, but once I did, I took on the same mentality. I never skipped a day.

[Nicole Chiler]

The Cal Ripken of KC Sports bloggers.

[Martin Manley]

I doubt if there is another human being alive that has published as much database research with commentary as I have over that time period. No matter the field, the question is whether I'm complimenting myself or condemning myself. I think I'm complimenting, but I can see both sides. You be the judge.

[Rich Levine]

What Martin found when he turned his raging workaholism to the Internet in 2012 was a place where everyone could, and it seemed like everyone did have a blog. This was the heyday of a million niche corners filled with self styled experts drawing small crowds to argue and opine about everything. Martin's new home was the perfect place to pour all his varied interests.

[Nicole Chiler]

But more and more his life became a series of math problems.

[Martin Manley]

The other day I was in a fancy FedEx retail store where there's a little fridge with several different kinds of pop. They're all the same size, 20 fluid ounces. The cost was $1.50 each. That's 7.5 cents per ounce.

[Nicole Chiler]

Quick calculations.

[Martin Manley]

A 2 liter bottle of Sam's Cola or a variety of other soft drinks is about 60 cents at Walmart. A 2 liter bottle has 68 fluid ounces, so that means it's less than a penny per ounce. And that means that the pop I drink at home is about eight to nine times cheaper per ounce than at the FedEx store.

[Nicole Chiler]

All to solve for a most efficient life.

[Rich Levine]

Martin was ahead of the curve on the whole self optimization, five hour work week meal replacement shake existence. Martin was on it far before the social media influencers. Before there were social media influencers. He started with food. One meal a day and he would

[Nicole Chiler]

never spend more than $6 on that meal, which created a brief hurdle when it came to ordering a pie from his beloved Godfather's pizza.

[Martin Manley]

I finally figured out the best way to do it. There is a long standing $4 off coupon on their site for a jumbo. And so applying that with tax just over $28, they cut it into 12 pieces. I would have three slices each day for four days. That's $7 per day. But I get back to the average of $6 because almost every other meal is less than $6.

[Rich Levine]

He also went even deeper back into his basketball heaven. Sleeping habits.

[Martin Manley]

I tried everything. One that worked for a while was staying up 36 hours and sleeping 12. I felt that was the most efficient because I had more prime hours in which I could work.

[Nicole Chiler]

The more comfortable Martin became in his own efficient world, the more fearful he became of life on the outside, a world he couldn't control.

[Martin Manley]

I decided I would never leave the country. The main reason is because I have zero confidence in my safety anywhere else. The horror stories you hear about those of Americans being targeted, kidnapped or arrested in some foreign land are more than enough to discourage me from being one

[Nicole Chiler]

more victim and living online. Martin ran headlong into a phenomenon that is now clear. There's a community for everyone.

[Martin Manley]

I practically lived on the Internet over the last 15 years, and I made a lot of friends. I probably operated better in that environment than in the real world.

[Rich Levine]

But the more you socialize online, the more isolated you can feel. Martin's life was wildly efficient, but it was also incredibly exhausting and lonely. Rootless. All of it perfectly dialed in and calibrated to his own specific ideals of peak performance and optimization.

[Martin Manley]

Four Ps to a healthier you. Pizza, Pepsi, poop and pee.

[Nicole Chiler]

He lived this way for years, until

[Rich Levine]

one day Martin did the math and landed on a different solution.

[Martin Manley]

I decided I wanted to have one of the most organized goodbyes in history, and I think I will be successful.

[Nicole Chiler]

He planned the most efficient death.

[Martin Manley]

You will rarely get any details for why a person committed suicide, but that won't be the case with me. This may be the most detailed example of a suicide letter in history, something to be entered into the Guinness Book of Records. My hope is that it is

[Rich Levine]

almost Vulcan

[Martin Manley]

foreign.

[Rich Levine]

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or is in emotional distress, help is available. Contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 988lifeline.org

[Nicole Chiler]

Next time on Chasing Basketball Heaven, Martin tests his commitment to efficiency.

[Martin Manley]

My New Year's resolution is to explore the idea of committing suicide sooner rather than later. Meaning don't just put it off until I become too old to matter to anyone or tool to record my life

[Rich Levine]

for posterity and begins work on his magnum opus.

[Martin Manley]

Let me ask you a question after you die. You can be remembered by a few line obituary for one day in a newspaper or you can be remembered for years by a site such as this. That was my choice and I chose the obvious.

[Nicole Chiler]

Chasing Basketball Heaven is a 30 for 30 podcast produced by ESPN, HyperObject Industries and MetalArk Media.

[Rich Levine]

It was reported and hosted by Nick Altshuler and Rich Levine with Craig Kilborn as the voice of Martin Manley.

[Nicole Chiler]

Executive producers from HyperObject Industries and Meadowlark Media are Adam McKay, Claire Slaughter and Bradley Campbell. Senior editorial producer of 30 for 30 podcasts is Preeti Varathan. This series senior producer is Raghu Manavalan.

[Rich Levine]

The series producer is Gus Navarro.

[Nicole Chiler]

Consulting producer was Gary Honig.

[Rich Levine]

Story editors were Jamie York and Mack Montanden.

[Nicole Chiler]

Sound design and mixing by John Delore

[Rich Levine]

Theme song composed by Alison Leighton Brown

[Nicole Chiler]

and John Delore show art by Brian

[Rich Levine]

Lutz Fact checking by Matt Giles and

[Nicole Chiler]

David Sabino for 30 for 30 and ESPN line producer is Catherine Sankey.

[Rich Levine]

Associate producer is Isabella Seaman.

[Nicole Chiler]

Production assistants are Diamante McKelvey and Anthony Salas.

[Rich Levine]

Producer is Carolyn Henry Hepburn.

[Nicole Chiler]

Senior producers are Mark Keith, Daisy and Gentry Kirby.

[Rich Levine]

Heather Anderson, Marcia Cook, Brian Lockhart and Burke Magnus are executive producers for 30

[Nicole Chiler]

for 30 rights and clearances by Jennifer Thorpe and Cal Griffith.

[Rich Levine]

This podcast was developed by Taryn Adalny and Cynthia Parabello.

[Nicole Chiler]

To listen to more sports series like this one, search 30 for 30 podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts or find us at 30for30podcast.com thanks for listening.