Basketball Free For All

One of the things we admire about great coaches is their ability to take in hundreds of different variables and quickly assess which are the most important. Even more impressively, they make these decisions in fractions of a second under incredible duress and despite adversity. But that is human nature. We are hard-wired to make sense of a lot of data quickly in pressure (read: survival) situations.

Image Courtesy of John Marcus

This weekend, there was a meeting of sports minds that contained an overwhelming amount of data, albeit without the stress. The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference was last Saturday in downtown Boston and about 1,000 people gathered (not to mention the waiting list) to see the sports analytics community’s most star-studded event. As one of the lucky few in attendance, let me try and make some sense of this event for some of you that weren’t there.

In almost every recap piece or summary, authors generally rely on themes to provide a narrative. While often forced, it is true in this particular conference’s case that natural themes emerged as the day and panels wore on. These themes weren’t forced, planned or otherwise coordinated but evolved from the combination of the collective minds in the building.

If asked to summarize the day in only three words, the best I can do is communication, business and opportunities. Of course it requires some unpacking but those three words relay the main points of the day in one way or another. But if that isn’t enough for you, here are my notes for the sessions I attended on Saturday for a more detailed description of the lively discussion and dialogue.

Overall, the most repeated theme of the day was the importance of communication. The sports analytics movement has been largely limited by their poor method of delivery, and not by the message itself. When wielded by someone with sound judgment and a sharp basketball mind, advanced statistics are dangerous.  No matter how informing any statistical metric or model may be, it will fail without the backing of the owner and general manager.

That’s why communication is so crucial. In the more poorly-run franchises in the league, there is a gulf between the talent side of the operations and the business sides. It is as if the two do not speak a common language and certain things get lost in translation, hindering their team’s success in the process. And the worst part is that the product on the court is not as good as it could be, which is everyone’s ultimate goal.

Note that the communication between talent and business operations fluctuates wildly from team-to-team. Teams like the Dallas Mavericks and the Houston Rockets, for example, have integrated the two sides to be a cohesive unit (think two sides of the same coin). Coincidentally, the leaders of these two franchises also served as the host of the event, Daryl Morey, and the superstar, Mark Cuban.

Cuban and Morey both embody the first theme in that they provide models of how talent and business can flourish together. In the Coaching Analytics panel, Avery Johnson credits Cuban with pushing him towards using more advanced statistical metrics. Cuban also hired Roland Beech of 82games.com to consult for his team and even sits next to him during games. When the owner, who happens to also be a remarkably successful self-made billionaire, takes basketball analytics that seriously, you can really do some incredible things (see the Mavericks recent winning streak for evidence). There is no disconnect between talent and business, giving the Mavericks an incredible competitive advantage over its opponents.

In Morey’s case, he also represents a unique model for how business and talent can mesh seamlessly. Because of his background (non-player, seen as a “normal guy”) and due to his unabashed nerd-status, he is probably the hero to every single Sloan attendee this season and simply to aspiring GMs everywhere. Without being fluent in business (a Sloan School of Management graduate himself) and numbers, there is no way the Rockets compile the record they have this season (31-31) with their lack of star-power and lack of size at center.

Even in discussing the first theme, the second theme emerges: business.

It’s time that the statistical analysis community recognize the simple fact that basketball teams are in the entertainment business. It’s so obvious and yet so rarely discussed when discussing advanced metrics or when presenting research, but it is a giant elephant in the room. So much stress and emphasis is put on wins and losses leaving very little attention paid to the entertainment value of the sports themselves despite the fact that is what makes a sports team a viable business investment in the long run.

Of all the presenters, President and General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs Brian Burke made the point most eloquently, with others echoing it later in the day. The point is simple: the vision and philosophy of a franchise have such a huge effect on the business of basketball, which reinforces the earlier point about needing to have effective and open communication between the talent and business sides of sports teams.

Instead of focusing solely on how using the findings of a particular statistical analysis may yield x percentage improvement, show how those same findings will increase revenue or increase the value of their investment or the team’s overall entertainment value. It’s about time the sports analytics community started to learn the language of the board room and shape their message to their target audience. To borrow a phrase, it is a much more efficient alternative.

But in identifying these areas of improvement, we open up incredible opportunities for the advancement of the sports analytics cause (if you will). The credit for this third and final theme has to go to the incredibly impressive Bill Polian of the Indianapolis Colts. As someone that follows exactly one sport, I was not particularly excited to heard Polian speak but I most certainly should have been.

When pressed by moderator Michael Lewis to identify deficiencies in the sports analytics movement during the conference’s marquee panel, Bill refused to buckle and instead re-focused the dialogue on opportunities instead of deficiencies. It’s a subtle but important shift. What initially seemed to be verbal jousting was instead evidence of a man who understands what it means to instill a positive team culture from the top down.

He just gets it.

Regardless of whether you look at it pessimistically (deficiencies) or optimistically (opportunities), three main opportunities emerged and re-emerged in multiple panels throughout the day.

CBA / Salary. As collective bargaining agreement negotiations are becoming increasingly tenuous and — let’s face it — downright depressing, people with intimate knowledge of CBA and salary cap rules are going to be in high demand. Ideally, it would be someone with a legal degree or background, but could be anyone who chooses to devote the brainpower to reading and digesting thick legal documents. Extensive knowledge of the CBA and salary rules opens the door for opportunities to get a job in not only the league office and team offices but also in the media as well.

Referees. Despite all the statistical advances in APBRmetrics in recent history, there is still a dearth of resources devoted to the study and analysis of the other three men or women on the hardwood. There are major opportunities in tracking and analyzing how these additional three individuals influence the game. In particular (and returning to our earlier themes), analyzing referees in terms of their impact on the entertainment value of the team and how it affects the bottom line is a major opportunity. And if they can be communicated effectively these analyses could add to both the win column and the corporate bank account.

Psychology. Owners and managers of all sports desperately want to be able to understand their players better. They want to have evidence-driven means of identifying traits they value in individuals, with the ultimate goal being real-time data on psychological factors at work. There is an incredible opportunity to mesh the study of advanced basketball statistics with the study of the human mind and human behavior. Blending these two disciplines is the next frontier in statistical analysis and is one that teams are starting to pay attention to.

In the end, this weekend was a watershed moment for the conference itself and for myself. For the conference, it has officially become mainstream, after fielding a ridiculously impressive and diverse group of panelists. As Bill Simmons quipped at the opening of the main event, it also “set a world record for most number of dudes in one room.” So, there’s always that. While he made the comment in jest, the fact is that Sports Guy alluded to an important and satisfying truth. The sports analytics community has matured, reaching a tipping point in both popularity and more importantly influence.

It’s safe to say that the outlook for the basketball analytics community has never looked better. Like all things in life, it’s important to take a step back, take stock of everything and put things in proper perspective.