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MIT Sloan Debuts Hoops Analytics Podcast ‘Counterpoints’

New podcast from noted sports analytics expert Ben Shields and MIT Sloan Management Review.
New podcast from noted sports analytics expert Ben Shields and MIT Sloan Management Review.

Counterpoints, a new sports analytics podcast, launched this week, with sports analytics consultant, author, and speaker Ben Alamar proposing that basketball IQ, separate from measures of athleticism or past performance, is a predictor of a player’s success in professional basketball.

Co-hosted by Ben Shields, who teaches sports analytics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Paul Michelman, editor-in-chief of MIT Sloan Management Review, Counterpoints offers fans and analytics professionals an inside perspective on what drives teams’ performances on and off the field.

In this debut episode, Alamar defines basketball IQ as “understand[ing] what’s going to happen on the court before everybody else does so they’re not reacting to what’s happening right now. They’re reacting to what’s going to be happening in two or three, four or five seconds. It’s like a chess master who is thinking four, five, six moves ahead.” Though the data is not conclusive yet, Alamar says he has developed a simple test for this rating, and predicts that ever more refined methods of capturing data from athletes as they play will make it make progressively easier to develop an accurate test of basketball IQ.

In each episode, Shields and Michelman set up a thesis statement and then turn to a top expert in the field of sports analytics to make the case. Shields and guests, including senior executives from sports organizations, sports analytics researchers, and sports technologists, engage in a lively discussion and debate, and look to data and analytics to prove or disprove the issue at hand.

Episode 2, also released yesterday, features Jessica Gelman, CEO of Kraft Analytics Group and cofounder and cochair of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Gelman joins the show to defend the hypothesis: Teams can win at selling tickets without winning on the field.

The podcast is brought to you by Ticketmaster. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to the podcast page to see other podcast options and to be notified of new episodes.

About Jerry Milani

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Jerry Milani is a writer and public relations executive living in Bloomfield, N.J. He has worked in P.R. for more than 30 years in college and conference sports media relations, two agencies and for the International Fight League, a team-based mixed martial arts league, and as a freelance professional. His PR clients have included Wizard World and FAN EXPO, which produce pop culture and celebrity conventions across North America, USA Wrestling, the National Lacrosse League, Strat-O-Matic Media, the Pacific Life Open and Pilot Pen Tennis tournaments and dozens of others. Milani is also the director of athletic communications for Caldwell University. He is a proud graduate of North Rockland High School and Fordham University and when not attending a Yankees, Rams or Cougars game can be reached at Jerry (at) JerryMilani (dot) com.

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