This is Wellington Smith at work and you get the idea, rather vividly, that it’s a fun place to work. He is now the director of operations for basketball marketing at GameChanger.

GameChanger is another one of the cutting edge statistic and scouting applications rising in popularity, if not necessity, across the country now. It’s the focus as the second part of this week’s five-part series.

I know people who have attended clinics that featured GameChanger panels — and one including Smith — and they have been blown away by how an iPad has, as Smith says, “totally revolutionized those numbers and the way people keep stats.”

Slowly and not without resistance, basketball is turning to number crunching much the same way baseball did and does with its sabermetrics. GameChanger computes and tracks all the traditional statistics, but it will also delve into advanced statistics and analysis to produce expected outcomes and explanations of outcomes. It shows player tendencies and preferences and does everything you’d need to understand the other team a little better than you can from a box score and a little easier than you can from film.

Nevertheless …

GameChanger also takes shooting and scoring statistics and arranges and combines them to provide two relevant and increasingly popular measurements: effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage.

They measure shooting percentages, but with much deeper meaning and greater illustrations for why one is so low or high.

“The game’s not so much about shooting the most shots,” Smith said. “Just because you shoot the most shots, you probably score the most points, but do you make most of those shots? That’s why we try to get away from that and focus on shooting the best shots to be more efficient and then making most of those shots. That way you can go from taking the most shots to being the most efficient player. The best player on the floor may not be your main scorer.”

GameChanger has formulas for two valued statistics: effective shooting percentage and true shooting percentage. Effective field goal percentage gives more value to a 3-point basket and combines those with made 2-point shots to create a value for points per shot attempt. The true shooting percentage is similar and considers how efficiently a player scores, but also includes free throws under the premise free-throw attempts are good for the offense.

What you’re left with are numbers that reward players who score points on fewer attempts and who help themselves and their teammates by making free throws and 3-pointers. Players who need a lot of shots and who don’t use the 3-point and free-throw lines aren’t treated so kindly.

GameChanger encourages an emphasis on efficiency.

“The game’s not so much about shooting the most shots,” Smith said. “Just because you shoot the most shots, you probably score the most points, but do you make most of those shots? That’s why we try to get away from that and focus on shooting the best shots to be more efficient and then making most of those shots. That way you can go from taking the most shots to being the most efficient player. The best player on the floor may not be your main scorer.”

So let’s have some fun. Operating on Smith’s recommendation that eFG% should be above 45 percent and that the TS% must always be better than the eFG%, let’s look at WVU’s 2012-13 team, plus incoming recruits Jonathan Holton and Remi Dibo.

Here’s last season’s stat sheet and the players are ranked by points per game. You’ll find that the GameChanger numbers do not rank players the same … but do rank them in a way that makes some sense, ie Terry Henderson was very good and Jabarie Hinds was not even though Henderson scored only two more points total than Hinds last season. Deniz Kilicli was the second leading scorer, but Aaric Murray and Kevin Noreen crushed him in GameChanger numbers.

All of that might give you some hope for next season if you believe in addition by subtraction. And speaking of addition, the numbers love the two junior college players.

We’ll put TS% first and eFG% second:

Eron Harris: .570 .and 515

Deniz Kilicli: .499 and .476

Aaric Murray: .550 and .514

Terry Henderson: .585 and .552

Juwan Staten: .471 and .376

Jabarie Hinds: .422 and .397

Gary Browne: .474 and .361

Matt Humphrey: .512 .506

Kevin Noreen: .556 and .516

Dominique Rutledge: .528 and .442

Keaton Miles: .550 and .472

Volodymyr Gerun: .305 and .231

Aaron Brown: .323 and .293

Remi Dibo: .574 and .536

Jonathan Holton: .556 and .532