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Jalen Rose, a 13-year NBA veteran and current NBA broadcaster and television personality on ESPN, was recently interviewed in The New Yorker regarding analytics. Specifically, Rose discussed the “cultural overtones” that analytics have in the NBA community.
Rose touched on Daryl Morey and the Houston Rockets, plus the Golden State Warriors, former NBA player Josh Smith, and a lot more in a recent interview.
In a feature-length Q&A conducted by Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker, Jalen Rose was immediately asked about the role that analytics has played in basketball over the past decade or so, specifically about how front offices are being sculpted by analytics in a way that adversely affects teams – and is also done with “cultural overtones.”
“There are many people that feel like it has a cultural overtone to it that basically suggests that, even though I may not have played and you did, I am smarter than you, and I know some things that you don’t know, and the numbers support me, not you,” Rose said in the interview.
“Two, you notice that, when it is a powerful job in sports—whether it is an owner, whether it is a president, whether it is a general manager, whether it is a coach—usually in football and basketball, sports that are primarily dominated by black Americans, it’s also an opportunity to funnel jobs to people by saying that, ‘I am smarter than you because the numbers back up what I say, and I am more read. I study more. I am able to take these numbers and manipulate my point.’”
Furthermore, Jalen Rose believes that players should have a more important role in front offices than they currently do, due to their experiences playing basketball:
“There is no bigger experience than being in the foxhole, in the huddles, and out on the floor—being a part of the game plan and being game-planned against,” Rose said in The New Yorker interview.
Rose played for six different teams across his 13 NBA seasons, winning the 1999-2000 Most Improved Player award and averaging 14.3 points, 3.8 assists and 3.5 rebounds per game in his career per Basketball Reference.
