BOSTON — NBA commissioner Adam Silver along with Nate Silver of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight held a one-on-one discussion Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference where they chatted — among many topics — about why analytics is woven into the fabric of the NBA arguably more than other U.S. professional sports leagues right now.
Silver first credited Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey and Jessica Gelman, CEO of the Kraft Analytics Group, for bringing the “NBA family” together nearly a dozen years ago for the first Sloan Analytics gathering.
“They saw that there was an irregularity in the marketplace, and there wasn’t the appropriate amount of discussion,” explained Silver, who added that the conference’s two co-founders brought together the NBA community to “build around basketball analytics.”
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Silver continued by stating how there has been two generations of owners that have entered the league, one being the Leslie Alexanders of the world. Alexander — who is the owner of the Rockets — was one of the early hedge fund starters in 1980s and, according to Silver, “practiced the same analytics skills in financial markets” as he did with the NBA franchise.
“He has an analytical focus towards investing,” Silver added.
“That next generation — the time when (Dallas Mavericks owner) Mark Cuban came into the league — you had a new generation of owners who grew up on data and understood the significance of data,” Silver said. “They saw an operation in the league that was still based on seats of the pants. …. There was a sense that we were skewed way too far towards the subjective side of scouting, player performance, officiating, the business side of the league.”
Silver said that since Cuban became owner in 2000, there are now other NBA teams owned by individuals in the private equity and financial worlds. Tom Gores (Detroit Pistons), Joe Lacob (Golden State Warriors) and Josh Harris (Philadelphia 76ers) are just a few examples of private equity owners who have purchased franchises since the early 2010s.
“I think it was sort of in their DNA to look at data in the same way they looked at it in other businesses and other industries they had been involved in,” Silver said. “That changed the culture of the league.”