quabi62

Ever heard the expression "It's not WHAT you know, it's WHO you know?"

Long story short... I knew somebody.

Definitely how fast a typical NBA game moves and the pressure associated with that.
We need to keep track of every single shot with details (shot type, shot location, assist, etc.) Many times there are 3 or 4 shots and rebounds within just a couple of seconds, maybe a block or something in there too... and we have to get all of that (maybe 15 different details on any given play) into the computer as it happens. If we miss something and fall behind, TV broadcasters are getting incorrect stats, people in the arena are seeing the wrong things on the scoreboard, and gamecasts on the internet are all wrong. So it takes a lot of concentration, and it's really not something anyone can do.

Yeah, we are responsible for all of the in-game stats that you hear on TV. The broadcasters will have a monitor in front of them with a running box score so they know up to the second, which player/team is doing what.

Each franchise has it's own stats crew, so it's always the home team's crew that does the games.

Everything is done by computer. As the events happen, they get put into the computer and from there they are fed to the monitors in the arena (TV broadcasters, scoreboards, etc.) and the internet, so they can go up on various gamecasts

Not much at all. It's not the sort of job you can live off of. Afterall, we're only working 41 nights a year, and only for a few hours per night.
Most of the game night staff guys like myself have normal, full time, 9-5 day jobs to pay the bills, and we do games a few nights a week for some extra spending money. We all get paid per game, not on a salary or anything like that.

i mostly skimmed through the article, but what I can say is there are certain stats (assists are the most obvious example) that are left up to the scorer's judgement. We are warned to be unbiased and fair, and I always try to be. I guess if someone wanted to "fudge" some numbers, they could... but these days everything gets taped and reviewed anyway, so if someone was doing it a lot they'd probably get caught and fired. Giving Nick Van Exel a couple of more assists in a game wouldn't be worth my job.