Industry Watch: Summer Comings and Goings

Sep 29, 2014; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie talks with reporters during media day at the Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Editor’s Note: In the nearly three months since Nylon Calculus launched, the professional side of the basketball analytics world has changed dramatically. Our goal of becoming a rich community devoted to basketball analytics means covering what happens on the court AND what happens off of it. As we head into the season, Seth Partnow, has agreed to add another hat to his already extensive personal haberdashery and cover news on the professional side of the basketball analytics industry for us. This post is his roundup of some of the big moves of the summer. 

The first installment of Industry Watch is a quick primer on some of the offseason’s bigger moves in the basketball analytics universe. First off, there was the launch of this blog, but then you knew that or else you wouldn’t be here in the first place! In terms of the basketball analytics industry both inside the league and out here were some of the more notable moves:

• Brian Kopp, the man known affectionately as “Mr. SportVU” both at STATS, Inc. and here at Nylon Calculus left STATS to take a position as President of North America for Catapult Sports. Catapult is one of the leading innovators in wearable and biometric tracking technologies.  Kopp spoke at length about SportVU and the potential integration between Catapult and SportVU technologies in my piece on the state and future of cutting edge basketball analytics. Kopp has also been appointed a member of the advisory board for the annual South-By-Southwest Sports. In the meantime, Kopp’s role at STATS is being filled provisionally by Ryan Warkins. With luck we’ll be covering some of the recent and near future developments from both Catapult and STATS/SportVU in the very near future.

• In other STATS, Inc. news, the company acquired Bloomberg Sports. No plans have been announced for how this acquisition will affect BSports (which has a strong presence in the world of soccer as well as basketball analytics) in the near future.

• The Brooklyn Nets are looking to hire a Director of Analytics.

• Vantage Sports announced they will be providing data and analytics support to the Milwaukee Bucks for this coming season. How the work with Vantage will integrate with the Bucks long term vision under aptly named Director of Analytics Mike Clutterbuck remains to be seen. Pure speculation on my part, but Vantage is positioned to offer short-to-medium term support for analytic information as Clutterbuck continues to assemble a viable and sustainable team. Vantage’s platform provides an extremely detailed charting service which breaks possessions and plays down to a far more minute level than do services such as Synergy. Last season, CEO Brett McDonald told me he was most excited about the possibilities for the improved defensive metrics such detailed charting and analyis will allow.

• In media news, Ben Alamar, formerly an analytical consutltant with among other teams the Cleveland Cavaliers has joined ESPN as Director of Production analytics. He’s hiring.

• After hiring Aaron Barzilai (one of the creators of APM-style modeling) away from the Grzillies a few summers ago, the Philadelphia 76ers have poached Ben Falk from the Portland Trail Blazers. Falk is regarded as one of the brighter minds in the business and has recognized the fundamental truth that an analytics department is only as good as the information it can allow a coaching staff or player personnel department to digest and use.

• Dean Oliver, one of the grandfathers of modern basketball analytics (really, read Basketball on Paper if you haven’t yet), has left ESPN to accept an as yet undetermined position with the Sacramento Kings. After the somewhat farcical dalliance with crowd-sourced analytics prior to the 2014 NBA Draft, the organization appears ready to pay for the pros.

• Finally, there were rumblings Tuesday night about Synergy Sports shuttering their consumer product, known and loved by video breakdown obsessed-bloggers everywhere. Early word is that some of the functionality will be integrated into NBA.com’s stats/video interface features. There will almost certainly more to come on this topic.

Additionally, several teams and media snapped up writers, bloggers and analysts over the summer. Most of these are likely consultancy-type positions, but shout out to Friend of the Blog James Brocato,  former (one would assume) proprietor of Shut Up and Jam for landing a full-time gig with the Mavs as a Basketball Analytics Associate. Best of luck James.

TNC will continue to report and analyze similar moves in the future as they happen. Any tips, questions or omissions, please let us know in the comments, via email at seth dot partnow at gmail dot com or on Twitter @sethpartnow.