Shane Battier, basketball, statistics and unselfishness in NY Times Magazine
A must-read article by Michael Lewis for anyone interested in any of those 4 things. I'm interested in the last 3, personally. It's hard to be that interested in Shane Battier, to be honest... but that was before I read this article. Turns out he's a total badass.
I'm a total sucker for articles about moneyball, especially when it comes to basketball... and especially when it is written by the actual author of Moneyball.
EDIT: A particularly cool quote from Hacker News regarding this article just caught my eye:
I think over the next decade we're in for a huge shortage of analysts and statisticians in almost all fields of life. Availability of data is ever increasing. The benefits from using it more effectively than competitors are immense. In almost all of the startup businesses in our portfolio (venture capital firm), we've now hired number-crunching guys who do nothing but metrics and we're seeing the results.
Statistics + computers + smart people = beat your opponent, whether it's Kobe Bryant or the startup next door.
5 comments
I play Fantasy Basketball and I've passed up on Battier for as long as I can remember simply because he has very little fantasy value, even though I've been a fan of his since his days with Duke. He's the "x-factor" in every game and every team he plays for.
In business, there's such competitive parity now because of the internet and its ability to reach people, the importance of finding that x-factor, the Shane Battier of a business, is more crucial now than ever. The days of counting click-through rates are numbered. Whoever finds the way to truly measure a brand's stickiness (all touchpoints) and take advantage of it will win out. Very general statements here but it's only a comment, not my own post...
Still, I want to grow up and become an analyst :)
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