SSAC19: Sports Mythbusting

[Music] hey everyone we're about to get started so I just want to welcome everyone to the 2019 so in sports analytics conference my name is Eric wee I'm a first year MBA student at MIT Sloan it's my pleasure to announce our panel our our panel today sports myth-busting the panel is gonna be moderated today by Stephen Dubner host of economics radio and Jason concepción senior creative at the ringer all right take it away guys all right thank you thank you Eric big thanks to Jessica Gelman daryl morey all the amazing MIT Sloan students who put on this great extravaganza can we just see a show of hands quickly anybody here listen to freakanomics radio kind of reliably okay cool great so if this panel goes well you will hear this as an episode eventually in Freakonomics radio and if it doesn't you will have the privilege of being the only people to have ever heard the panel we may occasionally have to start and do something over but we only have one hour and a great co-host and fact-checker he'll meet in a minute and five fantastic guests so we're going to just try to get it as much as we can at the very end if I mess up which happens I may need to you to sit for a couple retracts so that'll just be artificial we also need to grab some room tone which is basically the sound of the room with nobody talking so let's do that right now for like 10 seconds we could just sit in awkward silence together please beautiful best silence I've ever heard thank you we're ready to go yeah you can clap Matt don't clap we don't have any time we are ready to go so quiet down back to zero please and then rip as soon as you hear silence you can count us down thank you very much hey there I'm Stephen Dubner and today freakonomics radio is coming to you live from the MIT Sloan Sports analytics conference in Boston Massachusetts and joining me as co-host from the ringer please welcome Jason Consent sorry I'm okay that's fine it's also bad because I didn't tell you that we're not actually live so you figured that we're recording this will be a podcast at some point in the near future but I also just did that poorly so I'm gonna do it again hey there I'm Stephen Dubner today Freakonomics radio is coming to you from hey there I'm Stephen Dubner and today Freakonomics radio is coming to you live from the MIT Sloan Sports analytics conference in Boston Massachusetts and joining me as co-host from the ringer please welcome Jason concepción thank you very much Jason is host of the ringers NBA desktop and co-host of the hip hop culture podcast binge mode so Jason easy question to start which game of thrones character would make the best NBA general manager and why tyrion lanister his tenure as hand of the king was a triumph great organizational mind and out-of-the-box thinker I think he'd be really great with the salary cap excellent answer joining Jason and me as our live fact checker would you please melt welcome mic Mon mike is head of Global Insights at Qualtrics and co-founder of five for the fight the campaign to eradicate cancer Mike what would you say has been your greatest career athletic achievement oh I mean I have so many I grew up playing football baseball tennis but my book club suggested I tell you that I was the Spelling Bee runner-up but the joke's on them I wasn't the runner-up I got out in the first round and what word did you go out on analytics alright let's get on with it our format today is very simple here's the way it works the MIT analytics conference every year gathers some of the brightest people from all realms of sport and we're gonna bring a few of them on stage one at a time where Jason and I will ask them obnoxious questions or whatever else comes to mind Mike will simultaneously be working his Google machine to make sure they're not lying and when it's over we should all be a little bit smarter our first guest is the performance coach for the u.s. men's national soccer team would you please welcome Darcy Norman hey Darcy its are you doing thanks for being here thank you guys I am curious about injuries in sports so you seem like a good person to ask that you know you didn't see my giddyup in the hip on the way up did you I did see you taking the stairs gingerly was that recent no it's long-term all right so you're qualified injuries strike me as obviously important but to me at least that I may be totally wrong they also seem pretty random or at least unpredictable so is that true or have science and analytics started to make injuries any more predictable I don't think you really predict it obviously nothing is 100% predict blush and say nothing but you can it's we like to say risk mitigation so obviously there's best practices if we can keep things in order it's when we start making emotional decisions get guys to do too much or get people to do too much too quickly or whatever they can handle put them under circumstances that they can't managed appropriately then obviously the risk goes up Zion Williamson recently exploded out of his Nike shoe like Godzilla stepping on a grass like a piece of grass a tuft of grass what kind of role does equipment play and is there any particular brand as sneaker heads will sometimes opine causes more injuries than others I'm going for a sponsorship deal here let's see it the gosh I mean equipment what you use certainly plays a role it all plays a role and that's where your foot in those particular sports interact with the ground so how that interaction is the foot in the ground is that's is that a regular interaction you would hope so I think for the sports that it's appropriate for the so obviously all that all those pieces help or have an impact in the situation and so it is a huge part of it I think sometimes or a lot of the time at crucial times can get overlooked we just assume that it's gonna be good and everything's gonna be right but obviously it's another piece of the pie that we have to keep our eyes on and make sure it's up to up to quality Jason you'll notice Darcy did a pretty good job dodging your question and sizing it was like it was like neo in the matrix did you wanna Nate you don't want to name a you don't know I'm not gonna name names what do I say like sneaker brands and then you just kind of slightly nod but it won't show up on the podcast they won't hear it for like rhymes with Schumer all right let me let me ask you a more general question would it be better to choose a sneaker that explodes on impact or does not explode on employment well I think if the explosion is to divert some attention so you can maybe get a shot off I would say it's very it's very circumstantial what about so this is a question that I've heard athletes get upset about but you look not that fast or strong so I'm gonna ask him Wow well he hobbled a little bit what would you say is the relationship or correlation between athletic skill and injury oh gosh yeah I think there is one to how much I don't know but likes if you take two opponents one's more skilled than the other there's that anticipation of the person that you're going against if you make a move that you think okay normally the person that I should be facing would understand the move that I'm making and there's this back and forth you know then it works out but if you start playing with people that are under skilled they might think like oh he's going that way I'm gonna stand up where the person that's a skilled makes a move is gonna go and then they get stepped on kicked whatever the case may be so there's certainly some relationships there and I know I hear our athletes talk about it all the time if we play a less skilled opponent it's frustrating for them because they typically get a few more bumps and bruises so the bigger danger is when it's a let it's a skilled opponent against a less skilled in soccer at least I would say so yes yeah I don't have the numbers but you often hear proponents of the older days in a particular sport wax nostalgic for the time when athletes had weekend jobs and smoked cigarettes and ate just raw meat Elgin Baylor famously averaged 38 points a game while in active duty with the Army Reserves it was there something about is that is there anything to that was there something about that kind of older lifestyle that was somehow healthier I don't know the older lifestyle is still with a lot of athletes that I see is still present today so some of those people haven't given it up but I think you know at the the time that you're trying to play the intensity the repetition of the games certainly removing some of that stuff trying to live by the best science we can gives you the best opportunity for success cigarettes are bad for athletic for athletic endeavors are in your favor maybe for you know you get a couple puffs open your lungs for one game but in a long-term scenario Julie for the younger for the younger people out here what about Julie what's that Julie Julie Julie Julie I don't know okay that's okay let me just ask you finally before we throw it to Mike for some fact-checking so you are the performance coach for the u.s. men's national team correct so I can't think of anyone better in the world at least better in the world who's on stage right now at least to explain why the US women's national team is awesome and the men are dreadful yeah that's a fair question you know you go results or results and so we have to step up our game and you know they set a high bar we got to live up to it and hopefully we'll be doing that in the next few years you know back in the matrix with the bullet time Mike Mon Darcy Norman has been telling us about the state of injury prevention generally now claiming that exploding shoes can be useful and that cigarette smoking is awesome if you are an athlete can you tell us if all that checks out please yes so a couple of things it's not just about the equipment it's about the employees who are working for the companies so if you remember recently the wonderful satirical newspaper the onion posted a story with the headline Nike fires eight year old shoe maker responsible for Zion Williamson injury we're very grateful that they've corrected that problem another thing about predicting injury and genetics collagen is found out is a key component of our tendons and ligaments and the British Journal of Sports Medicine published a study that showed that there are specific collagen genes that make you more or less likely to be injured athletes who have torn their ACL are four times as likely as uninjured athletes to have a blood relative who suffered the same injuries so some people are actually born more injury prone and some less so Mike are you in excuse me Darcy are you increasingly using blood testing and injury detection and or prevention the athletes do do blood testing for various markers that we're looking for to help add nutritional supplementation understand how their body's operating so yeah we are using that to some degree excellent Darcy Norman thank you so much thank you guys I'm afraid you're live our next guest is one of the best point guards in basketball history a 3-time WNBA champion four-time Olympic gold medalist please welcome Sue Bird hey sue bird we know you've played for the Seattle Storm since 2002 you've also been doing some scouting recently for the NBA's Denver Nuggets we also know that in a poll of WNBA general managers asking them which play would make the best head coach after playing you were the overwhelming winner so so I'm really curious you can clap for that all 12 of them so I'm really curious generally how big of a fan of analytics are you as a player and do you think you'd be more or less or how would that differ once or if you move into a coaching or GM role I think as a player I am a big fan of it I think it's very it can be touch and go based on what player can digest so it's like if I'm playing for a coach that's heavily into analytics I love that they're at home studying it but I probably only want like bits and pieces of that otherwise it might be overwhelming so I think as a coach I'm definitely gonna have if I ever do become a coach it's analize gonna be 100% a part of my game plan but hopefully my playing side will understand that I have to kind of translate can you give one quick example where you've used analytics personally either something that showed that you were you had an opportunity or maybe a flaw so I definitely shoot the ball going left better just the way it is the numbers show it and did you not know that before though for you so it's like one of those things where once the number came to me I was like yeah that makes sense I'm really I'm much more comfortable going left so yeah so in my offseason I try to work on going right a little bit more I tried to extend my range little things like that as a man I thought it was important that I explain how biases against women shape our reality but then I you were here so I I want to ask you how does how do those systemic biases sheep the world we experience I actually didn't hear the first thing he said oh I I just was trying to man's plain misogyny so just how does being a how does it how does it perhaps you should have been we should have had a female head coach probably a long time ago or a female a front office executive awhile ago I'm always interested in eSports because there's a realm where physical advantages between genders don't matter literally don't matter and there are very few integrated teams and it seems like the answer Y is pretty obvious so I just wanted to get your perspective I think we all feel it right I think for a long time men have just been in the positions of power to make decisions and so it's what we know and a lot of times you do things in your everyday life in sports whatever the case is you don't even know why you're doing it you're just doing it you know and I think it's it's been great to be a part of an era where we're kind of starting to question that especially as a female athlete somebody who I play in the WNBA we're trying to get that you know get that league rolling even more to question things and to challenge that is quo and to not take you know no for an answer and kind of push limits so it's a balancing act for sure as an athlete you get just sick of being asked questions about being a female athlete yeah so can I ask you one more though okay but this I I mean I I have this question I want to ask this question in appreciation of the fact that it must be a pain in the neck but but I thought you might have something interesting to say about so there's a lot of academic research in different realms that shows that in general men and women men are more competitive than women okay in different business settings and in test-taking blah blah blah blah blah other studies say that that research shows a male bias and that in fact women may be more competitive than men again it's all case specific but especially when women are competing against other women as opposed to co-ed but but rather than asking you to settle that matter per se which is you know it's complicated I would I would love to know what you have to say about women's competitiveness and how it may be different from men's what you seen yeah I think a quick way to answer that is to use examples and I think now you hear a lot in the media of maybe you know we'll use Katy and dream on right like they get in this big fight everyone sees it at hat like you know and then a lot of the response to it is like what do you mean that's every day in the locker room our teammates are fighting all the time so in my experience yes I've been on teams where there's been verbal altercations I have maybe seen one physical one in my entire time and I just think women are very competitive I think there is a bias and that I think they just go about it a different way they can I don't know they just have a different way of handling those conflicts of handling that adversity when it's with their teammates it's I don't know I mean they say if women ran in the world there'd be no war right so I think there's a there's a part that that you see in sports that we just were not as quick to use our fists if there'd be no war though there probably be no sports because sports started out of war so would that be on balance better man either we're gonna do the hard hitters yeah why are men so emotional tinder hey do you have an answer for why the USMNT is so much worse than the US Women's National Team it's great and you have a little yeah inside ish knowledge by the way based on what I know so I think women in this country I mean we talked about wanting to like advance sports but it's actually it's it's clearly we're supported in a lot of ways especially growing up so from what I understand because women's soccer as a young kid you're supported you have places to play I don't think it's like that in other countries so other countries even though soccer football is incredibly popular for women for girls they just don't have that support so even a country like Brazil where they're just like naturally talented they don't have the same resources the same facilities whatever the case coaching so I think women's soccer is is that's why and also maybe in America there's more choice sports wise maybe some athletes are playing while hockey to set the other and not soccer can I up noxious Li ask you one more gender question I know it's really not fair here no well no you're here because you're a great basketball player but you happen to be female and honestly with this show especially this is a total sidebar that will cut but for this show especially doing and you know economic analysis and social science stuff it is really hard to get female guests on the show who super-super know their stuff and often they turn us down because it's kind of the same dynamic of men like this any stupid man is willing to talk into a microphone as evidence I mean right but many brilliant competent women turn it down and so it's you know there's a complicated endeavor so unfortunately I'm gonna drag you into one more question right so women's sports professional sports generally draw smaller audiences than men's much smaller in most cases though not always and female athletes generally earn much less than male athletes so again not always so as you see it our female professional athletes earning what the market will bear will will reward them or do you think there is a wage penalty for female athletes the way I see it I don't I don't ever you know if I'm entering some conversation with you know a CBA talk or you know trying to figure out our salary structure I never talk about it like we need more money we got to pay us more I view it as there needs to be investment like there needs to be investment in marketing there needs to be investment in all kinds of different ways and there's something about male sports where people will just invest they love it it's I personally think it's like a social status thing like I'll go to will you soccer actually I'll go to a Seattle Sounders game and like a play will happen and the guy is like Kol eerily offsides and the whole place is like what the hell and I get it you're a fan but I'm like I don't even think they know the rules like they're just here because they got to tailgate and they're drunk and they're having fun with their friends and there's status - male sports that I think women's sports need to hopefully produce in some way so with that I think it's more the investment and not just monetarily but it's I don't know I think we don't understand that men's sports has been backed for so long it's got so much history there and we're just getting started and but yet people love to compare us I mean I could do a whole podcast honestly about men and women's sports getting compared unfairly it's it's it's it's just not accurate all right let's do that at a future time Mike Mon did Sue Bird lie to us in any way no but we were correct that stupid men are willing to talk any time I think it's interesting what you talked about there needs to be an investment because a growing fan base takes time regardless of gender if you look back at the history of the NFL it struggled for many decades when it was first launched and almost went out of business for different times they had very small crowds not much money and the prevailing sentiment was that football should be a college game in the notion that you would watch grown men play football was almost appalling so if you look at how the WNBA is moving it's growing slowly but steadily it takes time and investment to grow this fan base and if that investment is given many suppose that that would have a similar effect to what happened with the NBA when it was given time now looking at women's competitiveness generally two quick comments there I can't help but think of Serena Williams coming back so quickly post-pregnancy there have been many unbelievably competitive male athletes who couldn't come back from that in fact I couldn't find a single instance of a male athlete accomplishing a post pregnancy comeback on on the personal side I totally believe that women are very competitive and to be clear if su challenged me to anything athletic I would admit to defeat on the spot run away and grab a donut donut eating competition Mike thank you sue bird thank you so much it's great to have you awesome I now see why people say the great things they say about Sue Bird that was great our next guest is the CEO and co-founder of draftkings the tech platform known for daily fantasy sports and increasingly Wow sorry I'm so sorry our next guest is the CEO and co-founder of draftkings the tech platform known for Danny Wow I'm not used to doing shows in the afternoon we usually drink all day then do a show at night so sober is plainly not the way to work I'm sorry all right you think so all right thanks notice it was a woman who said I can do it not a man they're like 24,000 men for every one woman here our next guest is the CEO and co-founder of draftkings the tech platform known for daily fantasy sports and increasingly for online sports gambling would you please welcome Jason Robbins I take your time get comfortable with the mic at your level if you want okay but after watching sue one request please no questions about how hard it is to be a white male tech CEO okay all right so pretty hard is it really yeah so Jason the US Supreme Court recently struck down the 1992 federal ban on sports betting can you describe your emotions that day and perhaps what you did to celebrate well it's pretty excited also relieved because it was something we had just been waiting for the Supreme Court has this wonderful approach of just not having any sort of commitment or schedule as to when they're gonna post certain decisions sometimes a decision will be posted on a certain day but it could be anything they don't go and order so we were literally watching it every single day I would refresh it at like 10:00 in the morning or whatever it was every single day for like a month two months straight so finally I was just like thank God I don't have to do this anymore and that was it it was it was relief okay but then the result was certainly happy and you did how much did you know about what the result would be well I think by the time I actually read the first line I already had 50 text messages on my phone and they all were saying bye-bye pass but you know stuff like that so I figured it was good and then I read through just to confirm before I allowed myself to get even an ounce of excitement but you know it's pretty clear in the opening part of it that that's what they were to say you do seem like a very excitable human standing yeah right people tell me that as a person who rarely had money I don't gamble that much I place one Sportsbet some years ago on the Timberwolves I won but I didn't know that I want and so I had to dig the slip out of the garbage can at the Las Vegas Sports book that I placed the bet could you explain to me and absolute me a fight how daily fantasy works how what's how daily fantasy works how does it work well one quick easy money on to what you said is it's kind of crazy in today's day and age that you actually had to have a slip of paper and the fact that it win the garbage meant you couldn't cash your bet so you know a little bit right for innovation in this industry I think daily fantasy is very similar to fantasy sports which means you pick a roster of players those players can be across any of the games going on in that day or that weekend for NFL and then their stats get translated into fantasy points so in football for example 10 yards it's worth the point touchdown is worth 6 after they get translating 2 points all your points get added together and you go against other people and whoever's team does better see idea and why they call it fantasy it's sort of like you're putting together this fantasy team as a general manager and people who are into sports who aren't very good athletes like me I was not as good as super believe it or not it wouldn't came to playing basketball so I got a lot of my enjoyment out of looking at stats and analyzing and so that's that's really who that type of game is built for which is most of the people who follow sports I think can I just ask the audience raise your hand if you do play at least one fantasy sport pretty regularly yeah so what is that Jason like ninety one percentage at this end at this conference I'm not surprised yeah so let me ask you this one longtime concern over sports betting which has been happening you know people have been betting on sports forever and a concern for good reason is corruption including match-fixing so I'm not saying I want to do this but if I did I do okay what would be the best sport to fix and why and please be as specific as you can including phone numbers of the athletes coaches or referees that you're thinking about that's a loaded question I think any sport that's still not offered in legal regulated books that's available in the black market which is any sport that's not offered in legal regulated books would be easier to fix because there's just zero oversight and really the whole point of bringing this out of the shadows and into the the legal regulated market is to eliminate I guess you could never totally eliminate but to at least reduce and catch quickly when those things happen and I think you're gonna see maybe more press acting like there's more scandals what it might be as more things actually start getting caught now that you're bringing things into the legal and regulated market how do you what are the things you look for when you're trying to figure out if a certain match is fixed well I mean it's not really something that I look for but we have people who monitor betting activity and you just look for anything unusual for instance if there's a first round match in the Australian Tennis Open and there was $100,000 bet on there being a double fault on the third serve in the eighth game of the fourth match for instance and you would actually look at that as an attempt we would never accept a bet like that because it would immediately raise flag so that's the kind of thing you look for is people attempting to get large action down unfortunately as long as the black market exists and as long as things that aren't able to be bet and the legal regulated market do exist there that's where people are going to gravitate but you would look for that type of attack when you try to curtail that kind of attempt is that something that you regulate yourselves or those regulations imposed by the authorities who let you operate so there's a mix it's certainly on both the operator and others to collaborate on this but you know the good thing here is it's not in our interest as a business we lose when fixes happen and people make big bets against them so we're about as motivated as anybody even outside of you know the altruistic view is a you know fan of the sport to make sure that doesn't happen in 1993 at the peak of his career Michael Jordan retired and said the following five years down the road if the urge comes back if the Bulls will have me if David Stern lets me back in the league bum bum bum I may come back conspiracy theorists for generations have seized on this comment as evidence that Jordan was forced to retire because of his gambling issues is it true what do you think what is your heart tell you if I knew that kind of information I would be much more plugged in than I am I was a huge fan and certainly I loved watching Jordan and I think it was a bit of a head-scratcher why he went to play minor league baseball but he's also a very competitive guy so you know at that point he was clearly at the top of the NBA maybe he wanted to feel like he could go and dominate another sport and when he realized he couldn't he came back but you know it's hard to say it's not something I would really have any knowledge of which of the major sports leagues in America have been most have been warmest toward daily fantasy sports or sports online the burgeoning market for online sports betting generally or let me add sorry let me ask a different question who's most scared of it honestly is what I want to know well that's actually amazingly a better question now and if you had asked that 10 years ago the first question you asked would have been the better question but most of the sports the first the first time it would have been MLB I'm guessing was MLB is probably one of the most supportive right earlier but no era was totally different right I think a lot of it where there were Commissioner changes there's also just change and sort of the nature of the consumer and I think people are realizing that the more and more that you know the fan base ages they got to figure out new ways to engage with young fans and young fans want interactive experiences they want games they want things that they can bet on that's just the reality so you can fight it or you can go where your fans are and usually the better business move is to follow the consumer demand so which league has been the least cooperate not I don't mean cooperative with you per se they don't really need well I guess you do want him to be right yeah I mean the Antarctica lacrosse me so Le'Veon Bell famously sat out the entire NFL season and in a contract dispute with the Pittsburgh Steelers so once he signs a new deal with the new team what share of his earnings do you think should be redistributed to the fantasy players who had bail on their team in the previous year you know I've heard that they're gonna have massive wealth redistribution so why not extend it to players to fantasy players no in all seriousness I think that levy on Bell made a mistake doing that but I also don't have any of the information and it's actually good most athletes don't have the luxury at that stage of their career being able to sit out so I think it's good for him that he was able to do that and you know I'm sure it'll work out and I'll end up on a great team you think you made a mistake why though I just think that you know as a running back you have such a limited window and I get he wanted to get paid but you know I think the danger for him is that that doesn't end up happening I think in this case though it's gonna work out so I guess the result was a good one I shouldn't say it was a mistake at the time I should have said I thought it was a mistake I guess now it looks like it's gonna work out for him hey can you talk to us a little bit about how pro sports teams or leagues make use of data generated by draftkings and other fantasy sports platforms how do the leagues make you yeah yeah I don't know that the leagues are really making great use of fantasy day at this point but it's something they're very interested in we've shown a lot of different looks at different you know behavioral things that give you insight into the fan to some of the execs at different leagues and they're fascinated by it but I don't know that it's something that they're really actively looking at now was there was there was there a point when you thought that this business would not fly was there ever a point when you thought wow what just wouldn't fly was there ever a point when you thought well if the Supreme Court decision doesn't go our way what are we gonna do next and what was what was your backup gonna be at that point when the state of New York's Attorney General was coming after us at that point it was pretty tough and thankfully you know thankfully he's going to prison right though I mean that should be a bit I don't know but wait can you back back back so for people who don't follow New York so I am from New York and yeah about 80% of our politicians end up in prison you should know that but the case of we'll just talk a little bit generally about the New York case with draft Kings who it was pursued by he the Attorney General Eric Schneiderman then had a major issue that I'll let you explain to the degree to which you'd like but just talk about that conflict between you guys in the state cuz I'll be honest with you as a citizen as a taxpayer it felt kind of like a state shakedown like it felt like a state saying to a business no we disapprove of this business we're gonna declare it illegal but if you're willing to give us a cut of X or Y percent then you know maybe it's a fine business so that's my perspective I'm guessing you're not gonna put it in those terms but I'd love to hear what you have to say about it I can see why it might look that way having seen it from our angle I don't think that's what happened I don't think there is any guarantee when shinai Derman made the decision to come after us that the legislature was going to tax it it just luckily worked out that way I think his aim was to shut down the industry and that's what he was trying to do and then whatever happen from there wasn't his problem so you know I think in some cases things just kind of work out that way because the system actually does work I wasn't necessarily a fan of how it worked in that particular case to get there but the outcome was great for us so you know I think the system works actually more than people think Mike Mon oh sorry and let me just ask you Jason I'm guessing that you play fantasy sports still yes I know that's how you began the business how'd you do this year and pick your favorite league alright so I used to when I as in my peak in college I had over a hundred fantasy leagues one year I was down to three this year and they were all in football cuz I just didn't have time for the other sports I have three kids 5 and under at home so it's just completely you have each of them running when your team's you're saying I've never been worse at fantasy now ring ironically that I am running a fantasy company than I have ever been in my entire but it sounds like you're really blaming your kids oh it's completely there I'm sorry did you say a hundred you said a hundred at once at one year and Joe is not just one sport it was across like tons of different spoils playing everything I loved family see as a kid so is college age typically peak participation for fantasy players or later I think you know fantasy as far as like the peak of it goes just because it is time consuming generally if you don't have a whole lot to do yeah which in college often is the case sure there's not a lot nuts not there's not a lot of like educational stuff to be doing at that time I mean there's some people there is others choose not to but all you gonna do couple hours of class a day you have a lot of spare time and also you don't have kids you don't have other responsibilities just as you go farther into life and get more other stuff going on it makes it harder for any hobby you have I haven't you know skied in two years either I'm going a couple weeks but I didn't ski in two years because I had kids I used to ski every single winter religiously so lots of hobbies for me have kind of gone out of the way since starting the company and having three children Mike come on Jayson Robbins has been telling us about craft kings fantasy sports generally the coming wave of online sports betting do you have anything to check or to add so many things Jason just told us about a court case that they won he said defiantly the system works sounds like incredible confirmation bias of every white male tech CEO and things work out was it a court case actually it was a law that got passed perfect thank you a couple of things that I would say on the sports betting industry the NBA and Major League Baseball have tried to implement something they call an integrity fee because with this 150 billion dollar illegal sports business they want some profit because neither the teams nor the league's get any of the financial benefit from people betting on or making money on their work and they think that's enormous ly unfair sounds familiar said every NCAA player ever Mike thank you Jason Robins thank you so much good to have you I stub our next guests rights for ESPN and his co-host of the new ESPN show High Noon please welcome Pablo tour a [Applause] historic moment in sports media as a to Filipinos appear on stage at the Sloane emilynics Council shout out salt shout out to all the Filipinos here we did it we made it Thank You Pablo it's Reggie Bush four shot McCants Miles Austin aleko escandarian Kris Humphries Lamar Odom Matt Kemp Chandler Parsons Rick Fox Lewis Hamilton James Harden Jordan Clarkson Tristan Thompson Lake Griffin Ben Simmons all these players dated at one time or another a member of the extended kardashian-jenner clan and I think it's important to note as we were talking backstage that the you know this kind of framing of these athletes as prey for these women is unfair this is a relationship that is beneficial often more to the athlete than than than the celebrity kendall Jenner is more famous and successful than her boyfriend Ben Simmons so what is it about this Kardashian effect which is the idea that an athlete's performance suffers when they date a Kardashian that fascinates us and and in particular is this effect real yeah I mean when I started dating Kylie in 2016 I was in it because of her fame but in all seriousness we tend to frame this problem around these guys being entrapped or these naive targets when in fact you know this isn't the lila cutting Samson's hair this is not Odysseus being wooed by the sirens this is not yoko breaking up the beatles these are guys who are looking for the haircut yeah they're going to take their yacht over to the sirens and the reason is because they're men who like gaming the attention economy that would be the most cynical interpretation or love right but the idea the idea stop laughing at that some people actually are here looking for love but the idea that these guys are targets as opposed to thirsty is really funny to me what happens to performance in before during and after dating a Kardashian clan member so I when I say clan member i realize that didn't sound right the minute I came out of my mouth I paused but it's with a k' oh wait a second yeah there are a lot of Ches I have a paper written by an enterprising Harvard student named Matty Chen and we may now table all of that very woke prologue I gave you because the effect is extremely negative so the idea of motive right why did I get into this that's the nuance but the effect is crazy so there is a statistically significant negative effect that meets the 10% level shout out to a room that actually gets that reference but it's staggering right Ben Simmons and again this is our percentage basis there's the paper that comes here you could access online later but mine is 20 percent Blake Griffin - 32 percent Brandon Jennings who I did not know dated khloe kardashian until i read this paper - 42 percent James Harden - 22 Jordan Clarkson - 73 shout out to half-filipino Jordan strikes then best Filipino basketball player of all time Lamar Odom - one point six one although extenuating circumstances there yeah I don't know if you've heard Stephen H Smith's theory on the morrow dome but if you do it's a great reference I just made Miles Austin - 50 - 0.65 Kristin Thompson research ongoing but - 18 okay so these deficits are in what though what's being measured exactly yeah this is a percentage decline as a matter of an advanced statistic that I'm ruffling this paper to find out because I'm literally stealing the work of a Harvard undergrad okay but wind shares per 48 mm okay and stuff guess what the one exception is Reggie Bush Wow shoutout to the og Reggie Bush because he went up 20.3% hey does the study control though for dating non Kardashian's so in other word you know is it just the fact that if you'd okay so presumably if you date someone that's very visible and maybe you know maybe there are other adjectives to go along with it then that could have an effect on your work life etc etc but does it necessarily have to be a Kardashian so there is more research in this that extends to people of public profile whether it be TV anchors whether it be other celebrities none of that was as statistically significant as dating a Kardashian is it possible that there's a little bit of a regression to the mean issue here in that you only get to date a Kardashian once you started playing above your actual ability so I found out this eyebrow this give it up for a regression I worked a Sports Illustrated right the SI cover jinx famously was mostly about how as someone who wrote two consecutive cover stories on Jeremy Lin you do it because the peak seems to be at hand so the counterpoint would be that Brandon Jennings dated Khloe Kardashian doubt aft everybody who knows anything about Brandon Jennings it seems to me this study is somewhat incomplete I'm wondering why we're not also tracking the relative quality of Kendall Jenner's makeup line while she's dating these various people well what about the performance in Keeping Up with the Kardashians why aren't we tracking that at the same time as these relationships are going on it's a great point Ben Simmons and I have hit the exact same number of NBA three-pointers I'm just saying like maybe the reason Kylie and Kendall have to shut down their fashion line was the guy doesn't really space the floor do you have any research on the kind of people to date that make you play better oh I would like to think that dating a therapist would be very useful but I would love and welcome that further research no I would imagine that I mean look my personal philosophy and by the way as someone with the TV show I am definitionally a Fame so I can speak to this but like my fear is simply like I would like no-one to ever see my loved ones on social media I mean I haven't silver yesterday was talking about this right now people are anxious and depressed and I have to imagine it's because people are inviting strangers yeah comment maybe even on stage at an analytics conference about the romantic histories and so I would imagine that discretion might be helpful it's interesting Pablo I see on your Wikipedia page that you grew up in New York and your dad is a urologist and your mom is a dermatologist so to me like the Kardashians story brings together your entire background yes beautiful it really does I didn't have a question about I just wanted to make the other day regularly marvel at the poor what is it circumference like small pores yeah and there's a joke that I would get fired if I was gonna say it after that dealing with urology so I will discuss possibly still today Mike Vaughn Kardashian curse according to Pablo Tori's rendition of recent research by a Harvard undergrad named Maddie Chang correct seems to be real with pretty significant magnitude and seems to have some legitimate explanatory power is there anything further you can tell us about that yes it's interesting so one everything that he said turns out to appear to be correct though I don't totally trust just kidding but the people that are worse to date if you're an athlete are reporters and that's and then second is actresses you don't want to date actresses so on average if you started dating someone who was famous they looked at just famous people in general if you dated someone who's famous your performance dropped for 48% and then after that increased 83% F the relationship ended just as good advice for all of us the best people to date as voted in an online survey are people who are funny smart shy confident and athletic get out of here yeah so that's why I lose again funny smart yeah I just want to tell everyone really quick my top 5 characteristics are funny smart shy confident and athletic so I think part of that I have no idea but part of that may be that this whole idea that people are seeking Fame they want this they want attention whatnot and so maybe people like a shy partner because they can shine and they're shy partner stays in the background hey I'm curious is there are there sort of are there any characteristics that seemed to be common among the men who date Kardashians like beyond you know I mean maybe it's athletic stuff maybe it's personality stuff maybe it's you know seeming ability to handle certain kinds of stressors that are doing I'm just you know what do you know I think it has to be an immunity to jokes right like if you walk into a locker room and everybody had previously upon your entrance been like making fun of the fact that you are dating said person I feel like you need to be fairly psychologically resilient right you need to not be bothered by the fact that we're all yeah we're all on TMZ hey Ari so that makes me wonder then if one explainer for the poor performance because you know when you first hear this research you'd say oh well that means that you're doing whatever you're staying you're traveling more you're staying up late more you're getting distracted more bah bah bah bah bah do you think it could be more internal you think it could be more reaction response from teammates I would like to think that peer pressure on this subject can create certain conditions like that but again Ben Simmons has made zero threes and so I feel like the peers aren't really getting to him on that either Pablo Torre thank you so much nice to hear from you our final guest tonight is a hometown favorite he is the assistant general manager and analytics guru for the Boston Celtics he is a three-time national quiz bowl champion he's created board games and he was recently named one of Boston's most eligible singles which please welcome Mike Zarin he's shy confident athletic and funny hey Mike what's happening guys everything's good let me start with the important stuff on the eligible singles front I see this has become a dating whoa great so am I to understand that being an NBA stats nerd and a quiz bowl champ and a board game designer are qualities that are now considered assets for a single person I think the fact that I had to be included on that list might tell you something otherwise there's certainly qualities that get you a lot of you know 18 to 22 year old guys coming up to you at this conference not mine not my target audience Harvey I want to go back to something you actually asked Jason about the the most easy sport to cheetah because the only reason I even agreed to come on this thing was because the very first statistical thing I ever did ever really was to work with the other Freakonomics Steve Steve Levitt on trying to find cheating and greyhound racing and greyhound the dog not the bus right versus race but I'll do that together I don't know but he his theory is a horse racing as easy as sport to cheetah because the horse won't complain if you tell it to finish fourth Mike you're an expert in the salary cap noted expert can't hear you really well I'm sorry Mike you're a noted expert in the salary cap that's your expertise that's what you do for the Boston Celtics is Kyrie gonna resign what is he going in the next or what Adam silver was here yesterday and I see a few NBA people in the audience so I think I'll pivot to another question sports owners are famously some of the biggest proponents of free-market capitalism that we have in this world and yet sports leagues particularly the NBA let's focus on that with its revenue sharing and strong unions are built on Reid distributive economics and a relationship with organized labor this seems like a really weird disconnect and I'm wondering if you could comment on it why are why are these men just fine with this in their hobby but not in the larger world I mean I think the quick answer to that question is everyone wants the theory of capitalism out there but when you have a really bad team and are worried about getting another good player it's nicer to have one just handed to you it is it's weird though like you go to Europe right and you end up in a country like I don't know what we'll pick some European in France France yeah is a hugely socialized civil service system there you can't just fire someone universal health care all these things but if your team's bad you're down to the next league so let me ask you have you ever so right so relegation and promotion are probably the single biggest like observational difference between European leagues for the fan right there's a lot of things that happen different in business revenue sharing in particular etc etc is there any way possible that relegation in any of the major US sports leagues could not only just could have happened but would is there any way that the league and by the league we really mean the owners would buy into the possibility that it might make for a better product because I would argue that as a fan the European Football League's having relevant relegation and promotion more important promotion totally changes the appeal of this sport yeah I mean you've got to ask a guy like Steve Ballmer if he wants to be in a league with the Erie BayHawks right the the the way they solve it the way they solve this in Europe right is there's there's parachute payments if you get relegated so you're a team that used to be in the Premier League and now you're down and what they call the championship even though it's not the championship because it Premier League's above it and you for the next few years you get some some payments so your business doesn't fall apart and it's the same thing if you get promoted they you know you got to like maybe build a bigger stadium or something like that so they some extra payments the other thing that happens in Europe that's interesting and I think our our owners are not super excited about is that the best teams get more of the TV money hmm so there's incentive to be really good but it also sort of in you know there's no salary cap there so the best teams get more of the TV money and they sign more of the best play though they get more the TV money for the domestic do the domestic leagues that whereas the international revenue is shared I guess equally I believe that's correct I'm not an expert on the economics of European soccer but but it entrenches teams at the top right yeah Michael tell you one way or the other and he's googling it right now the teams at the top get more money so they sign better players so they stay at the top and that's the system that the NBA owners have explicitly said they they don't want they want everyone to have a chance a pivoting off of that the the lottery the NBA lottery is something that is debated the structure of which is debated constantly has been debated over the last several years particularly with the Philadelphia 76ers process tanking system we had really heard of any have you heard of that so you know obviously you're talking about a system that that incentivizes badness what are the what kind of solutions could be applied to this that came really great that anytime argue about this problem well look I think it's bad for our business anytime our fans think our teams should lose whether I should lose I think they should continue to lose I want to be clear about that as an expand I would like the Knicks to continue to lose you are the next to keep losing so so but this is my point it doesn't matter whether the NIC what the Knicks are actually doing I think it's bad for our business if the fans some of the fans we have a system such that they should want the team to and so obviously I proposed a solution to that that the people have heard about but we don't need to go into too much detail about this draft wheel but basically you could you could just take turns having top picks you know so every five years you get a top pick and we could still draw randomly from that bucket so you can have a lot of reshow so the Pablos bosses at ESPN aren't upset but but there's trade-offs right so that also means that every so often a good team would get a high pick my response to that of course is that right now we have every year a bunch of teams fans want them to lose and people are worried about every so often one good team getting a good pick I think it's it's it's a system we could we could fix better but on the other side the league is doing pretty well right now the goose is pretty gold and we made a tweak to the lottery this year such that there isn't sort of this perceived incentive for teams to be historically awful which there was a few years ago that maybe Philly was or was not responding to but the bottom three teams all have the same odds now so there's not there's no benefit to getting from three third worst to first worst how much better if it all have NBA general managers gotten at assessing the pro potential of college players because I mean that's when let's say 20 years I mean I know more about the NFL than the NBA but like when I look at the NFL it's remarkable to me and there's been good academic research on this it shows that the best in the business at drafting are kind of terrible at drafting and I know that the NBA is a different scenarios yeah I mean I think I think it's a little less random in the NBA but not a lot I mean by the 20s pick in the first round of the draft the only 10 to 15 percent of guys are playing at you know the level of a rotation player on a playoff team and so you know if you're right 20 percent of the time with the 20th pick you're twice as good as the average GM but you're still wrong four out of five times and if you happen to be wrong the first four times you probably don't get to make the fifth one right so why aren't really random but but it's better now than it was because we have better information mm-hmm but one of the first things I did at the Celtics is we built a model of the draft and and then you know Darryl left and went to the Rockets and actually wrote down in an envelope the name of someone he was gonna draft and he dragged that I'm one pick ahead of us and I'm still very seriously what was the name you can look it up find a time when we're pretty lazy just know something do they yeah making me assignment really fast though cuz yeah alright look at me eight seconds to Google daryl morey envelope there was cash in the envelope as well right now there's no cash in the envelope but I did close the envelope before the start of the draft okay all right Mike Mon mike Zarin who is responsible for much of the Celtics success by the way was involved in their championship year in 2008 I did want to ask you my the Celtics last won a championship in 2008 the New England Patriots win a championship like every five minutes how much does that burn you not to we live in the or I think is the best pro sports town and one of the the best parts about this town is all the owners and teams are friends and we actually just had like a medical seminar with the people from all the teams so we love them that's my first answer my second answers we've still got 17 so it's all right Mike Mon anything Mike Zarin say strike you is patently untrustworthy no I think it's important to recognize obviously that there is a huge influence of money in sports a bunch of different researchers found that winning does increase exponentially with revenue perhaps one of the the most interesting focuses on the impact of money in sports is that there are all these fairy tale stories about small market teams or teams that don't pay a ton for the talent that they have in that they can do really well during the regular season and get into the playoffs because there's time during the regular season for statistical variation to level off but once you get into the playoffs it pays a lot to have a player who's 5% better because there's not enough time given a five game or seven game window for statistical variation to level out and that's why we may have these Cinderella type stories where teams do well in the regular season but the reason we don't see them continue to win is because they're not able to do that in a shorter cycle now it's also important I think to note that sports analytics have now made it everywhere everybody's using them so the competitive that people had in using analytics may have worn off there was a big article in CBC saying that curling may finally be having its Moneyball moment you know so it's substantiate smites point that everyone's using analytics in sports it also might be like that moment you saw your weird uncle with a man bun and realized that they aren't cool anymore and probably never were which is why mike has a man but hey hey Mike Zarin let me just ask you quickly in like 20 seconds analytics has been you were among the early NBA analytics people along with our patron saint daryl morey obviously at the Boston Celtics the promise I think to many non analytics people was that it would be the magic bullet that will make you instantly do things better and win championships and then when it's usually not there's a kind of you know post fact skepticism where do you feel we are in the arc and you feel that you're gradually becoming properly appreciated I I think in our organization it's gotten more and more such that that's not seen as a separate thing and and that's the that's the sort of end state of the arc not that there's a lot more work to do but you don't view this as a different type of stuff it's just part of the things that we do and you know hopefully that's the goal of things like this conference I am sad to say that it's all the time we have I I learned a lot I hope you all did too I'd like to thank Mike Zarin Pablo Toure Jayson Robbins sue Bird and Darcy Norman thanks to Jason concepción and Mike Mon thanks to Jessica Gelman daryl morey and the whole Sloan MIT sports analytics conference and thanks especially to all of you for helping us make this episode of freakonomics radio live good night [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: 42 Analytics

Views: 6,709

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Id: tACN8ZPYz78

Length: 61min 42sec (3702 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2019