Daryl was a lunchtime speaker at Sloan a couple of weeks ago. He discussed his job at the Boston Celtics. He does a lot of data analysis to help the Boston GM make decisions on which players to pick/draft/trade. Pretty interesting stuff. He says that only a handful of NBA teams are using a statistical approach to help them make decisions. I can only imagine that will change over time. And since there are so few teams that use stats heavily, it is hard to break into the field.
Daryl's BioNotes: 2000 Sloan grad
Consulted for 3.5 years at Parthenon
Teams get most of their revenue from tickets and TV
Most cost is from player salaries (60%)
Winning is all about getting the right players
Big reinforcing loop both ways (The better you do the more money you get the better players you can get. The worse you do, the less money you have, etc)
He thinks a baseball team could be run by a computer these days (referenced Moneyball), but not true with a basketball team. Too many intangibles that are hard to measure. Basketball is more of a team game than baseball.
FG%, Rebounding, Turnovers, and Free Throws are the most important stats for winning
Hard to pick high school players because stats are unreliable
2 Comments:
Ahh, it's Moneyball for basketball! Sweet.
My boss on campus actually used to work with Daryl. She says he's got a head for math, and the ambition to match it. I'm eager to see what he's going to offer.
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