MILWAUKEE » When two financiers purchased the Milwaukee Bucks for $550 million last April, they not only promised to pour more money and new management into the moribund franchise, but also the same kind of creative and critical thinking that had helped make them hedge fund billionaires.

It was not enough to increase the franchise’s sales force or beef up the team’s analytics department – the Bucks were looking for a more elusive edge. So in May, the team hired Dan Hill, a facial-coding expert who reads the faces of college prospects and NBA players to determine if they have the right emotional attributes to help the Bucks.

The approach may sound to some like palm reading, but the Bucks were so impressed with Hill’s work before the 2014 draft that they have retained him to analyze their players and team chemistry throughout the current season.

With the tenets of "Moneyball" now employed in the front offices of every major sport, perhaps it was inevitable that professional teams would turn to emotion metrics and neuroscience tools to try to gain an edge in evaluating players.

"We spend quite a bit of time evaluating the players as basketball players and analytically," said David Morway, Milwaukee’s assistant general manager, who works for the owners Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry. "But the difficult piece of the puzzle is the psychological side of it, and not only psychological, character and personality issues, but also team chemistry issues."

Hill contends that faces betray our true emotions and can predict intentions, decisions and actions. He employs the psychologist Paul Ekman’s widely accepted FACS, or Facial Action Coding System, to decipher which of the 43 muscles in the face are working at any moment. Seven core emotions are identified: happiness, surprise, contempt, disgust, sadness, anger and fear.

Before the 2014 draft, Hill spent 10 hours with Milwaukee’s team psychologist, Ramel Smith, watching video of various college prospects and picking apart the psyches of potential picks. The Bucks had the No. 2 selection overall as well as three second-round picks.

The most vexing player at the top of the draft was Dante Exum, a point guard from Australia who was projected to be taken among the top four selections. Smith had done player personality analyses but wanted to validate them by having Hill present his player assessments first. The Bucks selected Jabari Parker with their top pick, and Exum fell to Utah at No. 5.

"Nothing against Exum, but emotional resiliency, stability and an immediate, assured presence were all key considerations in support of selecting Parker," Hill said.

Until he sustained a severe knee injury Dec. 15, Parker was among the leading candidates for Rookie of the Year honors, averaging 12.3 points and 5.5 rebounds. Exum is averaging 4 points and 2 assists coming off the bench for the Jazz.

Smith said he felt that if Hill’s facial-coding analysis could be so effective in such a short time, his skills would be even more useful when given more time to assess players and work with the organization.

"I wanted him to be our secret weapon," Smith said.

But is such facial analysis truly effective?

Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist and director of the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania, said she was skeptical about its applications in sports.

"To me the big question is, ‘How well does the method actually work?’" she said in an email interview. "It’s not easy to get good evidence, because a player’s performance and teamwork are complex outcomes, and the teams are not run like clinical trials, with coaches and managers blind to the facial-coding findings and so forth. So it’s hard to know whether this system works well, gives some marginal benefit, or does nothing at all."

Hill has done facial analysis for 16 years, mostly for companies launching advertising campaigns or new products. He said his analysis is especially useful with focus groups whose members are often unwilling to speak frankly or have trouble conveying their true opinions.

"I look for quick, micro-expressions and instances of the say/feel gap – said this, but felt that – to guard clients against what I call speed bumps: hidden objections that keep a person from buying, if not recognized and addressed," Hill said.

Hill said he was inspired to take his work into sports after observing "profound sadness" in the face of Rafael Nadal soon before he lost the 2008 U.S. Open semifinal match to Andy Murray. The epiphany convinced Hill he could help teams find the "heart of a champion" and predict and improve performance through facial coding.

Hill measures the players on the seven emotions and categorizes smiles, for example, four ways: true, robust, weak and micro. Consider the Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook. According to Hill, he shows a high amount of weak smiles or "satisfaction," and enough "true" which equates to "joy" and contributes to what has so far been a highly effective season – an average of 28 points and 7 assists per game.

Football players are more difficult to assess because the players’ faces are obscured by a helmet’s face mask. Basketball is more suitable because players are more exposed and there are fewer of them. Still, Jeff Foster, who runs the NFL’s scouting combine, has hired Hill since 2011 to evaluate top prospects. He said Hill had a "master gift" for uncovering a football player’s emotional DNA.

Foster invited Hill to modify the questionnaire that players fill out. One of the questions Hill proposed was, "How would your mom describe you?" It is not the players’ verbal answer that matters, but rather their facial gestures when responding.

"Actions speak louder than words, and are a more natural medium for players who excel in getting in the zone and acting intuitively with great speed and skill," Hill said. "Verbal dexterity – including in the interview – is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Besides, it might serve as camouflage."

Foster said he believed that Hill’s services could be most useful for teams considering quarterbacks and safeties with high draft picks. Players at those positions require unusual leadership and cerebral traits that are notoriously hard to project.

"Dan has created an interesting emotional profile model to correlate the emotions he observes to characteristics that are important to an individual’s success," Foster said in an email. "I believe his insights could be valuable in helping teams understand an athlete’s emotional makeup and provide implications for how he may perform, both on and off the field."

Mike Leach, the Washington State University football coach, had Hill evaluate his team before to the 2012-13 season – his first there – in an effort to understand the kind of players he had inherited and what motivational tactics they might best respond to.

Leach lamented that coaches were overwhelmed with too much data that can lead to overthinking and indecision. But Hill’s facial coding, he said, could break through the noise.

"Someday Dan will be able to get hard data linking the face to on-the-field performance, and I don’t want to miss that," Leach said in a telephone interview.

Hill has worked with a few other teams, but the use of facial coding in sports is hardly widespread. Its acceptance may rest on the success of the Bucks.

"When daring enough to be creative, you have to be willing to be ridiculed," said Smith, the Bucks’ psychologist. "People laugh until they see results."

© 2014 The New York Times Company