The rise of big data is pitting the old school against the new school as the NBA undergoes its analytics revolution. Last week’s NBA Finals may have offered the naysayers the strongest evidence yet that analytics does, in fact work, that it’s become an entrenched part of basketball today, and that it will remain so for some time. The most-watched Finals since the age of Michael Jordan ended with victory for the Golden State Warriors over the Cleveland Cavaliers—both of which are teams that have heavily incorporated data analysis into how they play the game. The playoffs were yet another clear indicator that if teams want to win, they’d do best to ignore the likes of detractors such as Charles Barkley, who infamously went on a rant against the approach in January on Inside The NBA. (“Smart guys wanted to fit in so they made up a term called ‘analytics.’”)…