ESPN: Life of an NBA analytics consultant

[Doctor MJ]

This guy is trying to take credit for Sam Presti's success in the draft.

That's all it is.

This isn't the first time I've heard this story actually, and the first time I heard it he emphasized how embarrassed he was that said such definite negative things about Brook Lopez because Presti was strongly interested in Lopez. He felt that he fell in love with a candidate (Westbrook), and while it worked out, his behavior as an advocate wasn't actually very professional.

So yeah, there are a lot of guys like this who bother me for the reason you say, this guy seems pretty much fine.

[Nyphantom]

There's prestige in it because there tends to be an ample supply of guys working on wall street that would be willing to transition into sports analytics for a major pro team at a paycut. That's from my own personal experience in the industry, I've known guys at big hedge funds and investment banks that applied for some role at an NBA team and get shot down. The major analytics guys are starting to come from wall street backgrounds now.

The essence of prestige is in impressing others.

The supply of willing basketball analytics people isn't because people are desperate to tell their father-in-law they took a major payout to go work for a company specializing in a children's game, it's because they personally love basketball.

The labor supply is not all from basketball-obsessed people like you seem to think. Just take the example of the guy who wrote the article. He was a professor teaching Econ I think it was, and could have easily gotten any wallstreet job clearing over 300K. He said basketball was at best a hobby for him, yet he still chose to pursue it. Goldman Sachs pays below market comp, yet they get away with it because they know their name holds prestige. Same thing can be said about working in the NBA.

[Doctor MJ]

There's prestige in it because there tends to be an ample supply of guys working on wall street that would be willing to transition into sports analytics for a major pro team at a paycut. That's from my own personal experience in the industry, I've known guys at big hedge funds and investment banks that applied for some role at an NBA team and get shot down. The major analytics guys are starting to come from wall street backgrounds now.

The essence of prestige is in impressing others.

The supply of willing basketball analytics people isn't because people are desperate to tell their father-in-law they took a major payout to go work for a company specializing in a children's game, it's because they personally love basketball.

The labor supply is not all from basketball-obsessed people like you seem to think. Just take the example of the guy who wrote the article. He was a professor teaching Econ I think it was, and could have easily gotten any wallstreet job clearing over 300K. He said basketball was at best a hobby for him, yet he still chose to pursue it. Goldman Sachs pays below market comp, yet they get away with it because they know their name holds prestige. Same thing can be said about working in the NBA.

Saying basketball is a "hobby" is the same thing as saying you love basketball. You seriously think the NBA is getting tons of applications from guys who hate sports but are willing to take a massive pay cut to be associated with sports?

[WolvesGuy14]

As the value of analytics go up, I wonder if the salaries will as well. This would be my 2nd dream job (GM being first), but not for that salary. No thanks.

[chrismikayla]

Nvm

[Kevin Johnson]

When fresh-out-of-college hires can make $70-80K in industry and NBA teams are offering $50K to those analysts after 5 years of experience... it makes you really wonder what kind of people would be willing to take THAT type of discount just to work in sports.

I make well into 6-figures. I applied for an analytics/developer role with the Hornets. I was willing to come down to 70K thinking the salary could be that low. I mean it's a dream job working for a NBA franchise doing something with stats which I spend hours and hours a week on anyway. But I didn't even get an interview. It turns out there were a ton of qualified applicants who'd leave money behind to do geeky stuff with a sports franchise.

That's so dumb. What do they think is going to happen, they're going to be partying with the NBA players, mingling with the wives courtside? Plus, the article mentions them working 60+ hours a week, so they are making an extremely low hourly rate for the opportunity to sit in the office of an NBA franchise.

60 hours a week is NOTHING if you love your job. It's play. I've put in 14-18 hours a day, 7 days a week for weeks at times in different jobs when working on new products and releases. And most of the time it was work that I wasn't particularly passionate or care about. You do this with the understanding that you have down times in the year where you work from home doing nothing, get off at 2 pm and get rewarded in bonuses.

I am sure there is no NBA analytics guy working 60 hours per week 12 months a year.

[GYK]

Still nothing said on how they help, with such an obvious way to help.

[JonFromVA]

How can you be an analytics consultant with only spreadsheet skills (even if advanced)? What kind of "analytics" are they talking about here. Are you telling me NBA teams have been competing based on the results of Excel formulas?

What exactly do you think they'd need to do that Excel can't do? Up until SportsVu they were crunching numbers, and plugging their stats in to models, and developing the models with standard methods for fitting data such as linear regression.

SportsVu data is spatial and involves movement of many objects. It's completely different ... at least until the data can be turned in to numbers that can be crunched in traditional ways.

[NashtyNas]

Its really funny because I'm sure at least some of these entry level analysts can provide more over 2-3 years than 90% of rookies do in their first contract. Those guys get millions to sit on the bench and most end up out of the league shortly after...while people actually contributing have to survive on peanuts.

[TDevilsG]

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12338 ... w%2F%22%7D

The below is an excerpt from the article, but really highlights the evolution of analytic and how data scientists are taking massive paycuts for the prestige of working in the NBA.

After our trip to the NBA Finals in 2012, the Thunder decided they needed their analytics leader in Oklahoma City full time, which was certainly a positive for the field. They didn't, however, want to pay anywhere near what I would be willing to accept to move my family from San Francisco to OKC. They had already successfully recruited my former intern, a Stanford student, to accept a 60-plus-hour-a-week job for a salary that was far below what he could have easily gotten at a big consulting firm or investment bank, so they believed they could do the same with my position. At the time, they were probably right. There were still skilled people willing to take salaries well below their market value to work in the NBA. I left with no hard feelings.

So, after five seasons with the Sonics and Thunder, I hooked on with the Cavaliers. The process of being trusted was much quicker in Cleveland. Several members of the team's front office were actually eager to hear what the analytics said.

But soon a new challenge emerged: Starting in the 2013-14 season, SportVU cameras were installed in every NBA arena. The amount of data available to teams suddenly grew from a pond to an ocean. Think about it: Those cameras capture the coordinates of 10 players plus the ball 25 times every second. That's a vast amount of data. As a result, the race to unlock the secrets of the SportVU requires a much higher level of skill than what was needed when I first started working for the Sonics. In the beginning, anyone with advanced spreadsheet skills could probably add value to a front office. Now, though, deep statistical programming skills, along with advanced computer science knowledge, are needed to create value. These are skills for which companies such as Google and Facebook pay quite handsomely.

But teams have been slow to recognize the sandbox they're now playing in. The analytics community worked hard to be accepted and learn the language of the NBA, but maybe we did too good a job fitting in. Entry-level analysts are viewed not much differently from entry-level video assistants: lucky to be in the NBA and worth a salary not much higher than $35,000. Teams are used to competing with high school and college athletic departments for staff, not with McKinsey and Bain. Realistically, aspiring NBA analysts must be willing to take at least a 50 percent pay cut from what they could earn elsewhere.

Its really funny because I'm sure at least some of these entry level analysts can provide more over 2-3 years than 90% of rookies do in their first contract. Those guys get millions to sit on the bench and most end up out of the league shortly after...while people actually contributing have to survive on peanuts.

The difference is one of them is making money for their business and the other is costing money. Any kind of overhead like that is not valued nearly as much as the ones who generate revenue for the business.

[StocktonShorts]

"Hey, we're trying to figure out which 22-yr old to commit $50M to and we'd like your help analyzing this mountain of data. How does $35k sound?"

[Hendrix]

Well that article was kind of underwhelming, no?

It didn't go anywhere. The whole article could be summed up in one sentence. Basketball statisticians are underpaid compared to other positions they could take, and teams are becoming more reliant on stats guys.

What was the point of bringing up SportVu cameras twice? He briefly brought up what SportVu cameras are, how all 29 arenas have them installed, teams don't really know what to do with all the data yet, and are trying to hire guys to make sense of it. Ditched the topic. Then 6 paragraphs later basically re-iterated what he said earlier: All the teams in the league have SportVu cameras, there's a lot of data to try and figure out, and teams are trying to hire intelligent people to make sense of it. At first I thought I accidentally read the same paragraph twice.

For a guy that has a Ph .D in economics, he seems to either, not understand basic econ 101 stuff like supply, and demand in job markets, or is just stating the obvious. There is a large amount of supply for these positions, with limited demand, and equilibrium is lower (people get paid less), than in other fields with more demand, and less relative supply.

If someone capable of performing the job doesn't want to work there for that salary, that is fine, they'll find someone else who does. Does he expect the team to just be benevolent, and give them more money when they don't have to? I guess I just don't understand the purpose of this piece.

[Hendrix]

"Hey, we're trying to figure out which 22-yr old to commit $50M to and we'd like your help analyzing this mountain of data. How does $35k sound?"

There are maybe a handful of people in the world capable of playing basketball at a level that generates enough revenue to justify a $50mm contract, and millions of people that can crunch the numbers. Not really different than a low level guy in a finance or accounting departments for another company, crunching data to hand to his boss, that will advise on a multi-million dollar decision.

[NashtyNas]

Its really funny because I'm sure at least some of these entry level analysts can provide more over 2-3 years than 90% of rookies do in their first contract. Those guys get millions to sit on the bench and most end up out of the league shortly after...while people actually contributing have to survive on peanuts.

The difference is one of them is making money for their business and the other is costing money. Any kind of overhead like that is not valued nearly as much as the ones who generate revenue for the business.

WTF are you talking about?
I was talking about players that get paid millions to rot on the bench, and there are a LOT of those.
Teams miss on draft picks and FA signings more often than they miss on the analytics guys.
Those guys can also be fired without union's crying whereas players have to be paid what they are owed.
The fact that these 35l-100k guys are the ones that HELP the team figure out which guys to go after is what affects the bottom line.
A good analytics guy that is right more often than he is wrong should be paid in the range of a terrible bench warming player, at least.
They are more instrumental in the teams success than some player who doesn't even belong in the NBA. Basically, the players union has mandated a minimum for the players while the background workers who contribute more to the bottom line or success of a team have no mandate and therefore are overlooked. It happens in a lot of professions and it's ridiculous.

[cochiseuofm]

WTF are you talking about?
I was talking about players that get paid millions to rot on the bench, and there are a LOT of those.
Teams miss on draft picks and FA signings more often than they miss on the analytics guys.
Those guys can also be fired without union's crying whereas players have to be paid what they are owed.
The fact that these 35l-100k guys are the ones that HELP the team figure out which guys to go after is what affects the bottom line.
A good analytics guy that is right more often than he is wrong should be paid in the range of a terrible bench warming player, at least.
They are more instrumental in the teams success than some player who doesn't even belong in the NBA. Basically, the players union has mandated a minimum for the players while the background workers who contribute more to the bottom line or success of a team have no mandate and therefore are overlooked. It happens in a lot of professions and it's ridiculous.

IMO the players are the NBA's product, their combined salaries is akin to what cost of goods sold would be to a manufacturing company's bottom-line given the salary cap is a fixed % of BRI. So while I agree there are players who provide very little value to some teams, it doesn't make sense to base a front office employee's salary on what a bench scrub is making at all...

If NBA teams see value in having great analytic guys in their front office, what makes a lot more sense is to offer them salaries which compete with the other offers they would have on the table. But until the market dries up of candidates willing to be underpaid, they don't even have to do that.

[ccvle]

I'm interested to see how much value these analytic guys produce. Alot of teams are terriblely managed, bad drafting, bad free agents signing,etc.

[Slava]

This is the first time I read an NBA analyst's perspective but I heard the jobs are much better defined and way more salary friendly in baseball. Me and my professor got a tour of an MLB front office in 2009 when they already had a team of 32 people working a 9 to 5 job, some jobs were as basic as writing SQL queries to get data from a database not so different to something like basketball reference, others were hardcore statistical programmers writing R code on the fly to generate reports for weekly meetings. I guess it might be because the NBA community is still relatively new to data science while baseball adopted it a long while ago.

Baseball as a sport is also a lot more statistics friendly because the events are discrete whereas basketball has a very continuous flow with every event depending on the previous one and more.

[Doctor MJ]

"Hey, we're trying to figure out which 22-yr old to commit $50M to and we'd like your help analyzing this mountain of data. How does $35k sound?"

There are maybe a handful of people in the world capable of playing basketball at a level that generates enough revenue to justify a $50mm contract, and millions of people that can crunch the numbers. Not really different than a low level guy in a finance or accounting departments for another company, crunching data to hand to his boss, that will advise on a multi-million dollar decision.

There's more to it than that though. I'll put in terms of whether you're talking about someone who operates as a consulting expert or as a technician doing what he's told.

for the latter it makes sense to use supply and demand to your benefit, but for the former its dangerous to do this. Why? because these are people are having organizational level impact on something you don't understand. You want continuity and goodwill from them, so paying them what they could get elsewhere is the least you can do


So this is another way of saying these guys are paid so little because teams aren't really sold on them being as valuable as they think they are.

How can that be when we have analytic savvy GMs? Well obviously those that rise up the chain are getting paid like GMs, not like technicians


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[claudio-br]

"Hey, we're trying to figure out which 22-yr old to commit $50M to and we'd like your help analyzing this mountain of data. How does $35k sound?"

"Hey, do you like to make up fake trades on ESPN Trade Machine? Wanna take a huge pay cut to do that on real life?"

[Saints14]

"Hey, we're trying to figure out which 22-yr old to commit $50M to and we'd like your help analyzing this mountain of data. How does $35k sound?"

There are maybe a handful of people in the world capable of playing basketball at a level that generates enough revenue to justify a $50mm contract, and millions of people that can crunch the numbers. Not really different than a low level guy in a finance or accounting departments for another company, crunching data to hand to his boss, that will advise on a multi-million dollar decision.

There's a huge difference between a guy who can handle an excel spreadsheet and a data scientist who works for a tech company/finance/consulting. NBA teams aren't hiring the first guy, and the second guy is taking a massive pay cut to work in the NBA.