I listened to a podcast today titled “Data, Decisions, and Basketball with Sam Hinkie” hosted by Patrick O’Shaughnessy (thanks to Dale for tweeting it!).
Hinkie is a cult hero in Philly for championing “the process” which involved a lot of risk and uncertainty for the chance to acquire huge talent and ultimately be title contenders. He’s a controversial figure in the NBA, but given how popular tanking has become, it’s appearing more and more like Hinkie was ahead of his time.
I think he explained the process perfectly in this podcast by comparing it to the investment world:
“Imagine you’re at a fund, but everyone has a fund that’s exactly the same size, say $100 million dollars, and you can do as many transactions as you want, but whoever gets to the highest single dollar number at the end of the year, gets a ring. In that world, being contrarian is important, because if everyone agrees that Amazon is the stock to hold, and you put $80 million of your $100 million in it and everyone else does too, there’s no edge there; you’re going to have to be willing to do something that others aren’t. And you can do it in an intelligent way if you’ve got better input.”
For those who’ve never heard Hinkie speak, this podcast puts a personality behind the mystic. He’s well-spoken, long-winded, and loves the idea of using data to make decisions (in the long-term). He goes way beyond just basketball, speaking about investing, relationships, hiring (or being hired), and much more in ways that very few of us would ever do.
As a data analyst (not anywhere near the complexity of any of the stuff he talks about), it’s something that resonates. As someone working in ‘Corporate America‘, it’s shocking to see how often good data isn’t used to make important decisions, and something everyone should work on not just professionally, but in life too.
This is worth a listen!
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