What does statistics play in modern sports journalism?

All about modern sports journalism are statistics. More than the bare scores, such metrics, as PER in basketball or WAR in baseball, reveal how and why a player performed, and how his team made decisions about his performance. Roughly speaking, this rich data contains not just stuff for articles, but also supplies the sports wonk NYT crossword and other puzzles. These analytics are used by default by all writers and puzzle makers to generate smarter content and clues. All those statistics are beginning to trickle into sports coverage — good news for fans and sports, because there are becoming more layers for them to explore, even into crosswording.