In this Shingerview, David “Shingy” Shing talks with Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets, about how data and analytics drive the ‘winning formula that balances the art and science of basketball.’
I’m not much of a sports fan. I can easily watch and enjoy sports, but it doesn’t go much past that. Once a game has finished, so has my interest. I don’t seek out stats, injuries, recoveries, or anything else outside the game being played on the field. With all of that said, I still know how important these stats and data are to the game – I even know that stats in baseball, in particular, are relied on heavily. Morey has taken the stats collecting process from baseball and is applying it to his team and business.
The interview starts with Shingy asking Morey, “How were you able to determine that the data you could interpret for baseball applied to basketball?” Morey responds with, “We knew that data would help you make better decisions.” He continues to say that, as humans, we are able to recognize patterns. But we are not as capable at digesting large amounts of data, and making decisions from raw data. Morey then starts to name teams that have studied data, “…the Red Sox, obviously the movie Moneyball [2001/2002 Oakland A’s], Tampa Bay Rays, all of these teams have shown that it helps you win championships.”
Morey finishes by saying that decision makers across all industries, who are not using data to guide decisions, may be fearful of data. “…if you’ve risen up in the ranks to be the lead decision maker, and you feel like… you’ve done successful things, you’ve made good decisions…” then someone with data comes along and starts telling the lead decision maker that the lead’s decision are not supported by data, or the lead needs to make these decisions instead, because that is where the data points. “So it’s actually disempowering for these leaders to now use data, because the data almost becomes more powerful than them,” Morey adds. I’m sure this can be threatening to the lead decision makers, but the data users can simply use the best debate ender, which was giving to us by Walter from The Big Lebowski, “Am I wrong?”
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