For most kids growing up their dream is to be on the playing field as a professional athlete one day.. Unfortunately this doesn't work out for most. A couple recent Harvard alums Jason Rosenfeld and Daniel Adler are taking a different approach to getting to professional sports organizations through the front office and sports analytics.
Rosenfeld is the Manager of Basketball Analytics for the Charlotte
Bobcats, and Adler is the Assistant Director of Football Research for
the Jacksonville Jaguars. They met while members of the Harvard Sports Analysts Collective (HSAC), continuing their passion for sports analytics.
The recent interest in sports analytics began with the publishing of Money Ball in 2003 following the low budget Oakland A's squad that made the playoffs with a stat savvy general manager. Baseball, however is much easier to analyze quantitatively because of the one on one match up between a pitcher and a batter. Rosenfeld states how free flowing sports like football and basketball are much harder to analyze due to the points being scored are a product of not one player but the symphonic combination of many. For these reasons, the statistical movement in these sports has just begun.
Although the nature of both Adler and Rosenfeld's jobs are secretive, the general areas they are able to influence their teams in is through pre draft analysis as well as in-game scenario decision making such as whether to punt or go for it on 4th and 2.
Basketball statisticians have also been able to develop new value adding stats such as player efficiency ratings (PER) that dig deeper than apparent stats such as points scored to rate a player's true value. Interestingly enough last year NBA MVP Lebron James didn't lead the league in value added; that person was James Harden. Hence the huge deal James Harden signed with the Rockets at the end of last season.
In short Adler states that, “All we are trying to do is weigh things equally and overcome the human biases.”
The link to the article is:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/11/6/harvard-alums-statistics-pro-sports/
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