One reads with a certain weary predictability that the ‘National Basketball Association’—or whatever permutation of corporate branding they’ve settled on this week—has, in its infinite wisdom, unveiled a new metric. ‘Emotional Endurance,’ they’ve dubbed it, abbreviated, with characteristic American brevity, to EE. As if the sheer, unquantifiable messiness of human temperament could be distilled into a number, suitable for PowerPoint presentations and the lamentable discourse of television pundits.

The premise, one gathers from the summary, is to discern which athletes can truly ‘handle the pressure.’ A noble aim, perhaps, if one hadn't rather thought that was precisely the point of professional sport for, oh, the last century or so. Coaches, one might recall, used to simply observe players – a rather quaint, analogue approach, I grant you – and make a judgment. But no, now we require a ‘groundbreaking move’ to quantify the ‘intangible.’ The mind, frankly, boggles. I’ve covered elections where the very fabric of government hung by a thread, and seen men with genuine power — not merely a propensity for dribbling a ball — ‘wilt under the bright lights.’ The stakes, I assure you, were somewhat higher than a missed free throw.

This, we are told, will ‘revolutionise scouting and contract negotiations.’ One can only imagine the exquisite tedium of the boardroom debates now: “Yes, Mr. Smith has an excellent jump shot, but his EE rating, you see, is merely 7.3, which suggests a suboptimal capacity for emotional fortitude during the fourth quarter, particularly against teams with a propensity for aggressive zone defence.” Good heavens. It’s a game, you know. A simple contest of skill and, yes, nerve. But nerve, it seems, is no longer sufficient; it must now be measured, categorised, and assigned a perfectly meaningless decimal point.

The league hopes this will provide a ‘more holistic understanding’ of performance. What it will actually do, one suspects, is provide yet another data point for agents to manipulate and for general managers, bless their earnest hearts, to pretend offers some profound insight. I’ve seen this before, of course – every new ‘breakthrough’ in analysis merely complicates what was once understood through mere observation and experience. It rather takes the joy out of simply watching, doesn’t it? But then, perhaps that’s the point.