Read Mark Cuban's blog. He talks about in-depth stats all the time, including a lot of refereeing stats. Are travels more likely to be called in close games? Are more fouls let go in the first half?
There have been specific mentions of assistant and second assistant coaches doing a lot of statistical research about opponents.
I don't think they're absolutely essential in a local league or even in the NBL but the NBA is big money and absolutely every edge is crucial.
The Sixers players and coaches watch game tapes (well, DVDs now) and Breheny distributes statistics to each player in the lead-up to a game. Those sheets will include stats from the season, the last five games, a shot-chart, breakdown of scoring (left, right, from range, dunks, etc). For each player, there is a focus on their likely match-ups in the game. For someone like Paul Rees going into a game against the Tigers, this would be very obvious. For other players, it might vary.
A player is never going to rely entirely on those stats to make their game, but it would hardly hurt to be aware of the information.