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Is the 'high five' metric the only weird stat the NBA should track?
Brandon Knight #3 of the Phoenix Suns high-fives T.J. Warren #12 after scoring against the Los Angeles Lakers last season. The Suns recently revealed they are monitoring high fives as a way to judge of players are working as a team. Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Is the 'high five' metric the only weird stat the NBA should track?

A "high five" metric? It exists and the Phoenix Suns are using it to track interaction on the court as a way to judge how "selfless" players are during a game

Hello and welcome back to the Yardbarker roundtable where we invite our experts to sit back, relax and sound off on the serious (and not so serious) parts of sports. We're a week away from the NBA regular season so it's time to get serious and ask the hard questions. Does casual player interaction matter? In light of the Suns' new stat we asked our staff: 

The Suns are tracking "high fives" this season to judge player camaraderie. Is that a reasonable metric? What else should the track to make sure players are getting along, on and off the court. 

Demetrius Bell: One of the reasons why I believe that Andruw Bogut isn't known as "Milwaukee Bucks Legend" Andrew Bogut is because of a dark moment in a seemingly innocuous game in Atlanta a few years ago. Bogut was taking a free throw, made the free throw, and reached out for high fives. None of his teammates returned the favor, so our lonely hero high-fived invisible teammates. Nobody should be subjected to that type of cruel isolation, so I'm definitely in favor of using high-fives to track camaraderie.

Jason Clinkscales: It’s a wonderfully absurd metric. I doubt that they’ll measure it for the entire season since the Suns will probably lose too many games to make players really care about camaraderie. Yet, it’s great because perhaps the Suns’ marketing team can come up with some silly team giveaway around it that could put butts in seats. What I do want to see measured is the performance of bench player celebrations. And if there is something begging for proper analysis and scorecard judging, it’s what the guys riding the pine in a given moment are doing after a highlight play. How good is a player’s towel waving? Does he get any height on his dismount from the seat while getting hyped over a vicious dunk? How low to the ground can a player go in his “HOL’ UP! HOLLLLL’ UP!” stance? And how about interpretive dance: does a player use his entire body or does he believe in subtlety? Adam Silver, it’s up to you.

Alex Wong: Judging camaraderie by 'high fives' sounds like some real basic 'how do we get any insight into how these jocks communicate with each other' metric that really should not exist. But if that's what the Phoenix Suns want to do, you have to let them cook. In the age of social media, I think it's time teams start tracking the interactions between teammates on Twitter, Instagram and all other platforms in which they are dispensing information on a daily basis. Remember all the controversy over LeBron not including Kevin Love in his Instagram photos, or when he unfollowed the Cavs account last season? Or how much we enjoy when teammates roast each other on Twitter for their post-game attire or photo bomb teammates sleeping on the plane? These are legit team bonding moments and there should be a scorecard throughout the season on how many times teammates bond, which teammates are bonding, and if they're not, it's up to management to get to the root of the issue. In this new age, social media team chemistry is a real thing. High fives are not.

Sam Greszes: The Suns should track player camaraderie the same way I track how close I am with my friends. It's a foolproof system. First, you track how many times your friends post on your Facebook wall, or send you mundane snapchat videos of whatever they're doing at the moment. Then, you let existential dread creep in and wonder why your other friends didn't send you anything, and if the ones that did only did so because they felt obligated to. Then, you lay awake in bed until 3 A.M. wondering if your life is a lie. That is the recipe for a healthy life and a healthy NBA team.

Shiloh Carder: Wow, there are just so many. The butt pat. The jump up butt-bump. The slapping hands after missed and made free throws. The bench guys towel waving. The slap on the back of the neck. The stink face when one of your teammates makes a sick play. The matching ensemble of teammates when doing post game pressers.

David Matthews: Teams in the NBA have basically all of the same information available for scouting and analytics (what up Synergy!?) so creating proprietary metrics is the logical next step. However, I'm not sure "high fives" is a good one to measure camaraderie. High fives will have much more to do with on-court success for the Suns. If Devin Booker, Eric Bledsoe, and Dragan Bender do something ridiculous that leads to a bucket, of course they're going high-five and get mobbed by Tyson Chandler. True camaraderie? That's harder to measure, but I think I've got a good idea about where to start: Instagram. Teams need to monitor their players' feeds in order to do this, but I think it can be done respectfully. Is everyone following everyone? Who is liking whose photos. Who takes the most selfies on another player's account? Stay off Snapchat, that's not for work.

Phillip Barnett: If I'm Devin Booker, I'm looking for high fives after every bucket this season. I want everyone to know that I'm in line to become one of the league's best young off-guards and that my teammates are incredibly happy for me. It's a ridiculous metric that toes the causation vs. correlation line without really telling a story. Watch any free throw attempt this season and you'll see how meaningless high fives are for these guys. If you want to measure camaraderie, find was to quantify what teams are doing off the court. Instagram and Snapchat is the best way to find which teammates are close and which teams are spending time together on their off days – or at least spending the kind of time together that won't get them in any kind of trouble.

Jamie Neal: What a joke. Is this really what the NBA has come to? Is this what sports has come to? I can just see the locker room conversations now.

Eric Bledsoe -  "Hey, Barbosa! You can't leave us hanging like that out there."

Leandro Barbosa - "What are you talking about? I slid over and helped on defense! Don't tell me I'm leaving anyone hanging, man!"

Bledsoe - "No, man! I'm talking about giving high fives! You know they're tracking this stuff now to see how well we get along, right?"

Kerith Gabriel: I've always believed there should be a hire in NBA front offices to assigned solely to this very metric. We as fans care about this stuff so it needs to be taken more seriously. Should the league ever decide to do this, I believe the five cornerstone metrics should be (but not limited to): the ass slap, the chest bump, the unique handshake for on court. Off-the-court, should be the number of times fellow team members photobomb pictures from the paparazzi, which players also play the role of chauffeur on practice or game days and a running winners and losers tally in credit card roulette

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