In Which Half are the Wolves?
by PoorDick on Mar 12, 2010 2:32 PM CST
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Today the Wall Street Journal published a story citing interviews with all of the NBA teams. Half of the teams have at least one paid "Stathead" on staff, and the winning percentage of those teams is much higher than the teams that don't designate a specific position to statistical analysis. Note the quote from my favorite POBO, and yours.
Are Statheads the NBA's Secret Weapon?
According to interviews with every team, The Wall Street Journal found that half the league's teams this season have at least one of these statisticians who helps make in-game, draft-day and trade-deadline decisions. Many of these teams are among the NBA's best. The list accounts for all six division leaders, including the Orlando Magic and Dallas Mavericks, who have a data analyst traveling with the team. These 15 teams that have invested heavily in statistics have combined to win 59.3% of their games this season. The 15 teams without such analysts have won 40.7% of their games, and only three—the Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz and Atlanta Hawks—are on pace to make the postseason. Houston Rockets' general manager Daryl Morey, one of the pioneers of statistical analysis in the NBA, says more teams will soon come over to the quant side.
Of course, there are plenty of veteran basketball decision-makers who don't believe that stats are the only key to success. They'll tell you the difference in winning percentages has less to do with statistical analysis than with statistical freaks. "If you took LeBron off the Cavaliers, you could give them 10,000 number crunchers, and it wouldn't make a difference," says David Kahn, the Minnesota Timberwolves' president of basketball operations.
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Horrible quote
Verging on the embarrassing. So if you don’t have LeBron, there’s no point in trying?
by Eric in Madison on Mar 12, 2010 2:39 PM CST reply actions
Right--
but in such a short story, the context may have made it sound more dismissive than Kahn meant.
That ocurred to me as well
but I didn’t let it stop me from ripping Kahn.
I can’t be stopped; you can only hope to contain me.
by Eric in Madison on Mar 12, 2010 4:10 PM CST up reply actions
Causality
Kahn could be making a comment about causality. There are many things that make team successful, Lebron James is one and quants are another. I think he’s correct that Lebron is worth more wins than a quant. But the quants may be an essential component for efficiently spending cap dollars to put talent next to Lebron.
But how many teams have a psychologist??
Yeah… That’s what I thought.
As a Stat-Head
I don’t have much of a problem with this quote. Lottery luck has doomed this franchise way more than lack of Statistical Analysis.
The quote in itself isn't terrible...
But coupled with a consistent subtle dismissal of advanced stats is what’s most troubling.
Everyone uses stats!!!
The “number crunching” teams are just using the good analytical ones as opposed to the non-number crunching teams who are using the bad statistics (pts/gm, reb/gm, asst/gm, Height, and any other type of statistic that isn’t pace adjusted).
I can confirm that they are in the...
…“do not have a full time stats guy” side of the equation. They use stats, they just don’t have a full time guy, which was the question from the WSJ reporter.
Forever splitting the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs
www.canishoopus.com
They also..
….don’t have a stats company contract above and beyond the league-wide StatsCube. I.e. they don’t utilize something like Synergy Sports.
Forever splitting the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs
www.canishoopus.com
what kind of $ are we talking about here?
How much does Synergy cost?
It’s insane not to have a full time statistics person. Insane. Assuming you can find one for under $1 million a year, why not have one? It’s not going to hurt the franchise to have a stats person. Pay him and don’t listen to him. But at least have him/her there.
Very depressing.
If you're paying a sports stats guy over 1M
they better be pretty damn good at what they do.
Look at us suckers… doing it for free…
not even close to 1 mil
they’re in the normal middle class earnings range.
Forever splitting the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs
www.canishoopus.com
Hey you deleted your first response!
Yeah I’d love to get a job like this part time. I do it anyways so I might as well get paid 15K for doing it!
Here's something to know
about sports management salaries: nobody except the brass makes much money, especially for the hours required and for a busines with nine figures in revenue. My guess is that they can find some hoop head toiling away toward his doctorate in quantative analysis, offer him 60 grand to come work at a job that will actually impress people at his next high school reunion, and they’ll have more than enough candidates from which to draw.
But adding any type of external eyes and ears requires the boss to admit that maybe he or she doesn’t have all the answers. Those with some tenure and a successful track record are usually more comfortable doing that than those who have the opposite of that a resume like Kahn’s.
$60k for a PhD???
Is that market rate??? Don’t get me wrong, it would be a sweet gig, but come on!
Above market rate.
depends on the field, but academic jobs for new PhDs are typically lower. In fields where you can jump in as an assistant prof, you will likely make less. And in the life sciences, where you intern as a post-doc, you are very lucky to make low 40s. In industry the pay is better, but probably only if your degree is an important component of your job, and how many PhDs are?
This is only tangentially related, but...
I graduated from college in December, and soon after that I put on a suit and walked into the Wolves office to speak to an HR person (after sending numerous emails and applications which didn’t get replies) about finding a job with the organization. Basically, my pitch to them was that, although my degree (biology) is completely unrelated to any job they might have for me, I know basketball, I know the NBA, I know the Wolves, and I’m smart, hard-working and teachable. I said that I’d be willing to work for minimum wage to prove myself as long as there was some hope of moving up if I performed. I more or less said “find me something and put me to work, I know I can help in some capacity.”
Well, they said that I wasn’t even qualified to be an unpaid intern, but that it looked like I had plenty of “janitorial” experience (I worked manual labor summer jobs to put myself through school) although unfortunately they weren’t hiring janitors at the time.
I came away with the impression that to break into the organization you’d have to either go to school for sports management and take unpaid summer internships or have marketing (or whatever) experience and be willing to work for far less than market value. I didn’t realistically expect them to hire me because I claimed that I’m smart and resourceful enough to put my basketball jones to work for them in some capacity, but it would have been nice not to have been told that the Minnesota Twins might be hiring janitors. So I think you’re right in saying that they’re in a position to be pretty selective and stingy with salary for most anything below the top management positions. Either that, or something about the way I presented myself screamed “janitor!”
BTW, I’ve been a lurker here for a while, I enjoy the site.
Yes.
Professional and college sports programs get several hundred applications for any single position, especially entry level jobs. Usually they go to:
a. A relative of somebody who is a monstrous advertiser
b. Someone with credentials and experience that blow everyone else away
c. Someone who already has wedged themselves into the organization through luck and busting ass
d. Someone with ties to the organization (i.e. a previous player)
If it’s any consolation, in many cases the job is awesome for about the first two weeks. After that, it becomes “a job.”
By the way, if your user name here is the same one you used when you applied for the job, I think I see part of your problem . . .
Think we could submit an application for Canis Hoopus?
I think if we take everyone who posts here we might be able to fill out requirements for B
We might even be able to use JustAFan’s connections for part D = reference!
Name: Canis Hoopus
Age: 3?
Sex: Mostly male
SSN: we’ll figure that out later
School: A lot
Major: There was some math, business, law, science, english, and education with a few other various things strewn in.
GPA: Available on request
References: LMA
When can you start? When will you hire us?
Hours? We usually waste our lives 24 hours a day every day… We could probably keep that up.
Required Pay? Maybe just set aside a lot of tickets for one game every year. Or every game… we’ll make it look like there are fans!
Ever been arrested for any felonies? If yes, explain. Arrested??? No.
Could probably even claim a nice tax break with such a large number of dependents
Brilliant.
Love the demographic profile.
"Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have." Steven Wright
I didn't use my moniker
but they must have done some sort of background check before I walked in the door, because it seems like they found out (I’ve been using it for all my online stuff ever since I signed up for a fantasy baseball league with some friends in the sixth grade. Seemed like a good screen name at the time. Now it’s tradition.)
Thanks for the consolation Mr. Dick (or can I call you “Poor?”). I didn’t really expect that I’d be able to convince them to hire me, but I didn’t have anything better to do and thought it was worth a shot. I figured that a lot of it was based on connections, but hoped I’d at least get them to hear me out and think outside the box a little. But hell, I probably wouldn’t have listened if I was the HR person and saw my resume. The things that I’m good at don’t really happen to coincide with my degree or work experience, but it ain’t easy to convince a potential employer of that. Especially not one that can afford to be as choosy as the Wolves.
Loved the Brian Cardinal reference.
Don't get discouraged
You did the right thing, which is weigh out the risk of applying vs. the potential reward. Since the worst thing they could do (say, “No”) might be disappointing yet have little material affect on your situation, it was wise to walk in there.
Keep the faith . . .
2008 Median household income in the state of Minnesota..
…was $57,288 according to the Census Bureau.
Playing or not playing?
Sorry, too lazy to do the math.
"Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have." Steven Wright
You know
For all of Kahn’s talk about learning and trying new things (like bringing in Crouton to work with the players) you’d think he’d be open to trying out a stathead. The investment, compared to other basketball decisions, would amount to essentially a rounding error ($120,000 out of $10 million for a solid starter, for example). Unless egos are getting in the way, I think we’ll see a stathead or similar service join the Wolves within a year or so, if for no other reason than because that’s where the NBA is headed and Kahn is nothing if not sensitive about bringing this team back up to NBA standards.
Growing my own "Darko-stache" since last Monday.
by biggity2bit on Mar 13, 2010 11:40 AM CST via mobile reply actions
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