Jonathan Safir came with Todd Golden from San Francisco and Wednesday was named UF's director of basketball strategy and analytics.
Strength In Numbers
Thursday, March 31, 2022 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. —It's an anecdote that has gotten a ton of run when it comes to telling the story of Todd Golden and the foundation of analytics in his coaching philosophy. In fact, it was glossed over in a FloridaGators.com feature that ran March 18, the same day Athletic Director Scott Stricklin announced Golden, by way of the University of San Francisco, had been named head men's basketball coach at Florida.
It read like this.
USF was up just two points in a game with 22 seconds left. Instead of playing straight up for the stop (and risk a potential tie or giving up a go-ahead 3-pointer), Golden ordered his team to foul a poor free-throw shooter away from the ball on the possession. The player missed the front end of a one-and-one. San Francisco won the game. Jonathan Safir
Consider that passage a Cliffs Notes version of what actually went down. For the real 411 — and a lot of other numbers — go to Jonathan Safir, who as an assistant coach for Golden at USF doubled as the team's analytics maven. It's a field of expertise the New York-bred mathematics wiz embraced as a box score-entranced kid growing up, then further honed as a four-year letter-winning player at Vassar College, and fine-tuned as a graduate assistant at Columbia University before taking his number-crunching to the West Coast.
In his new office at the Florida basketball facility and wearing a new Gator-logo polo shirt, Safir (pronounced "sapphire," like the gem Golden believes he is), UF's new director of basketball strategy and analytics, recounted the moment in more detail. Far more detail.
The game was against Brigham Young, a top-15 team at the time, according to KenPom.com advanced metrics, as well as a 40-percent shooting team from the 3-point line. The player the Dons fouled was forward Yoeli Childs, a three-time All-West Coast Conference player on his way to 2,000 career points and rebounds. Childs was shooting just above 60 percent from the free-throw line for the season, but also had played a string of games with a finger injury and actually was making closer to 45 percent from the line on his bad hand. On the USF bench, the coaches were confident he would get a touch on the late-game possession. So they decided to foul.
"And he was by far their best offensive rebounder," Safir said. "So we're taking him out of rebounding position and putting him at the free-throw line, instead."
Like that January night back in 2020, Safir ran the numbers.
"So we're up two, but if they get the last shot, they have a 40-percent chance to win the game by making a 3. But if we foul, we put a 60-percent free-throw shooter at the line shooting one-and-one," Safir recalled. "The expected value of that is not great — less than two [points], and certainly not three — so we take losing out of the equation, unless they get the offensive rebound, but he's not likely to get it 'cause he's at the line. If he makes the two free throws, worst-case, we're tied and we get to free-roll overtime, meaning we get a chance to win the game or miss the last shot and go to overtime, where we still have a 50-50 chance to win."
Then came the summary.
"So in order for us to lose the game, he has to make both free throws, which at 60 percent on the season is like a 36-percent chance chance, and then we have to have an empty possession on the final possession of the game, which is about a 50-percent chance, and then we have to lose in overtime, which in this case was about a 50-50 probability. For BYU to win the game, after we fouled Childs, they have to go .36x.5x.5, which is like 9 percent. Even if the numbers are a little bit low, and even if we factor in outlier situations — like a free-throw offensive rebound or shooting too early on the final possession and giving BYU another chance to score — that number is still less than 20 percent. But if they get off a 3, there's a lot higher chance for them to win the game than 10 percent. And that's a zero-sum outcome, resulting in an insta-loss."
Got that?
For the record, USF won the game 83-82. Just over two years, a 57-36 record and the program's first NCAA Tournament berth in nearly a quarter-century later, Golden came cross-country and brought Safir with him to do what he's done and mostly loved all his life: Immerse himself in numbers. The adverb "mostly" is there because the 28-year-old Safir, while gifted in mathematics as long as he can remember, has always been enamored by numbers; some way more than others. As a kid growing up in Buffalo, young Jonathan helped his father with fantasy football lineups and memorized every statistic imaginable of his beloved hometown Bills. Along the way, he could handle algebra, geometry, trigonometry and the like — it came naturally — but those subjects didn't particular interest him.
"I love data and numbers that are applicable and I can visualize and conceptualize and understand, but not the abstracts, proofs and lost-in-the-sauce stuff like that," he said. "The math I aced and was most interested in involved real-world problem-solving."
Like, say, engineering or physics or economics, for example?
"No," Safir answered. "Like sports."
Like basketball.
The Florida approach to analytics won't necessarily be as rigid as the sabermetrics made famous by "Moneyball," the book and 2011 movie starring Brad Pitt (left) and Jonah Hill.
Some may hear sports and analytics and immediately think "Moneyball," the best-selling Billy Beane baseball book of 2003 and blockbuster Brad Pitt film of 2011, and there certainly are some elements that apply. But the metrics approach of the Gators, both Golden and Safir agree, will more closely resemble the one detailed in "Astroball," the lesser-known 2018 book that detailed the ascension of the Houston Astros (yes, before any trash can revelations) and how they landed on a business model that married sabermetrics to the human element that goes into scouting.
"They can work together," Golden said. "I like to think we're on the forefront of the analytical movement in basketball, but Jonathan also understands and has an eye for talent and uses both those data points to form opinions. I think having a marriage of those those is the way to go. Using strictly data, you're going to miss some things. Using strictly the eye test, you're going to miss some things."
Together, they found a happier medium they believe works for their business model.
Jonathan Safir during his days in the Ivy League as a do-everything (and unpaid) staff member of the Columbia University men's basketball program.
Here's how Safir and Golden found each other.
In 2015, his final semester at Vassar, Safir drove from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to Indianapolis for Final Four week to start networking in hopes of finding a path into the coaching profession. He met Golden, then an assistant at Auburn, at a Jewish Coaches Association breakfast. It was there Golden suggested that Safir seek out Kyle Smith, the head coach at Columbia University who was searching for a graduate assistant. It was an unpaid position (in New York City, no less), but one that would put a lot of responsibility on Safir's shoulders.
Safir did the Ivy League thing for three years and, after finishing his master's in sports management, went west to reunite with Smith, who had taken the job as USF head coach. Golden was an assistant on the staff. After three consecutive 20-win seasons, Smith was hired away by Washington State and Golden was named his successor. In 2021-22, Safir was promoted to full-time assistant coach for the first time, but with the Gators will take on a different role; one with a heavy-hand in scouting, evaluating and in-game calculations.
"He just has a great understanding of the direction basketball is headed and a great understanding of the way the game should be played from a value standpoint," Golden said. "We think smart wins."
Clearly, they think alike. Golden's teams go into each game with three primary areas of focus: defense, ball security and rebounding. If the team hits its markers in those areas, Golden allows his guys to play more freely on offense.
They are:
* Defense — Tally six "kills" per game. Three consecutive defensive stops constitutes a "kill," which in turn probably equates to lapses of two or three minutes when the opponent is not scoring. Hitting six "kills" means 18 failed offensive trips. That's going to show up on the scoreboard.
* Ball security — A 16-percent turnover rate. For context, the Division-I national average in '21-22 was 18.4 percent.
* Rebounding — Golden's teams want to limit opponents to 25 percent on the offensive glass, while seeking 33 percent of their own missed shots. Data shows that an 8-percent differential equates to around 8-10 more possessions per game.
Call them "smart" goals. And, like Golden says, smart wins.
Safir is definitely smart. He's also really, really happy now. A little bit in awe, too. That feeling hit Safir when he entered the basketball facility for the first time and saw the NCAA championship hardware in the building's lobby and those five Final Four floors hanging on the walls in the practice gym.
Ever since, Safir says he awakes each morning with a smile.
There are no numbers to quantify his excitement.
"It's like I have to pinch myself and wake up from this dream," Safir said. "We get a chance to come to this place place and implement our way of doing things and install our analytical approach at the highest level … and I'm doing it with a Florida Gator logo on my chest. Amazing."
