Takeaways from MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

Player and ball tracking data at the forefront of MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

On March 1-2, I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, held each year in Boston. There were over 2,000 attendees packed onto the third floor of the Hynes Convention Center. The conference is co-organized by analytics advocate and current Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, who got his start with the Celtics.

While the conference prides itself in presenting several different sports, basketball was center stage at this conference. Paul Pierce, Adam Silver, Sue Bird, Wyc Grousbeck and Bob Myers all sat on panels along with media members Zach Lowe, Rachel Nichols, Bill Simmons, Jackie MacMullan, Kevin Arnovitz, Howard Beck and the always funny Jason Concepcion.

Day one started out with a talk from former NBA official and current Vice President of Referee Training, Monty McCutchen. This discussion focused more on the culture of refereeing. While the word analytics was tossed around here and there, it mainly pertained to health data collected on all referees. Overall, the talk felt vague, probably because McCutchen still works for the NBA and therefore had to toe the corporate line. It would have been interesting to learn about the analytics which went into the new rule changes for this year, primarily the 14-second offensive rebound shot clock reset.

Kevin Arnovitz gave a talk about the value of each NBA game. The general consensus amongst players is to shorten the length of the NBA season. Arnovitz reiterated this point, as there exists a low point in the NBA season, around mid-March to early April, where fan engagement grows dry. The takeaway of the talk was to reduce the length of NBA regular season but do so in a way which keeps revenue the same. This could mean raising the already expensive ticket price.

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Bill Simmons and Adam Silver had a one-on-one conversation regarding certain issues around the league. Silver was cautious but transparent, praising the likes of Demar DeRozan and Kevin Love for talking openly about league-related mental health issues. The topics ranged from tanking to tampering to the expanding popularity of the G-league. Silver stayed pretty much on script despite some playful prodding by Simmons.

The Boston Celtics were well represented at the conference. Assistant general manager Mike Zarren and Paul Pierce sat on a panel titled “Finding the Next Unicorn”. Like most of the panels, the talk was general and seemed to reiterated common trends in the NBA, like finding malleable, do-it-all type players. Zarren made some interesting points about the 2010-2011 Celtics team, noting that despite his age, analytics justified playing Shaquille O’Neal. He indicated how the Celtics were a different and much better team with O’Neal on the floor. The panelists all seemed to agree that O’Neal would have remained a dominant force had he played in today’s NBA, perhaps even more dominant due to an increased emphasis on floor spacing.

Day two featured owner Wyc Grousbeck who discussed the ongoing rivalry between the Celtics and Lakers. The talk was more of an oral history recount of late great Celtic-Lakers moments, but Grousbeck took us a bit deeper into the infamous 2013 Brooklyn-Celtics trade. He stated how the Celtics initially secured two-first future round picks, but due to the Brooklyn’s desire to win now, these two picks morphed into four. Grousbeck told the audience how he kept asking Danny Ainge to go back and ask for more assets. Ainge did, and the Nets kept submitting to Celtic requests.

Apart from the panels, the conference also featured a plethora of basketball-related research. While the panels are always fun, it’s the research which drives the innovation.

Tracking data in the form of player and ball movement was a major point of discussion. The ability to pinpoint location gives teams a wealth of new information. These presentations attempted to answer questions such as, how can we model movement, or what type of ball and player movement translates to winning basketball.

The company STATS LLC had a booth showcasing their ability to track the limbs of players on the court. Every arm, leg and even hand motion was tracked by their technology. It was interesting to learn that the Orlando Magic, in pursuit of a competitive advantage, purchased an exclusive contract with STATS to receive college tracking data. According to STATS, they are the only team in the league to have access to this information. It will be interesting to see how the Magic use or attempt to use this data for future draft-day decisions.

For those thinking of attending in the future, one does not need to be a math person to enjoy the conference. Authors Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Epstein were all a part of discussions pertaining to big-picture themes and ethical concerns of analytics.

The conference was in its 13th year as baseball and the sabermetrics revolution paved the way for analytics in major U.S. sports. Since then, organizers have put a lot of effort into staging basketball related panels and research. As movement technology grows, basketball seems to be the hotbed sport for innovation. The ability to statistically quantify the game of basketball seems to be expanding as the sport continues to grow in popularity.