CD Stepping Down [Fox 26] Daryl Morey of the Celtics will take over for him at the end of next season.
I don't know anything about Daryl Morey...but I'm sure I'll know everything about him in the next few days.
Wow, breaking news... What's the scoop on this guy? Good history of talent evaluation? or the next Isaiah...
Here's one profile I found on him. With CD leaving there ain't no "Texas flavor" left with the Rockets that's for sure. http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/alumni/morey.php Senior Vice President, Operations and Information Boston Celtics Boston, Mass. As it turns out, Daryl Morey spent most of his life preparing for his job with the Boston Celtics. As a college student, he worked part–time for STATS, Incorporated, and invented a statistical method for calculating team win percentages from raw points scored in basketball, football, and hockey. When he graduated from MIT Sloan, he joined The Parthenon Group as a principal consultant and director of knowledge management. At Parthenon, Morey got great exposure to the business of sports by leading the valuation analysis first for one of the Boston Red Sox acquisition teams and then for the group that ultimately bought the Boston Celtics and took it private. With Parthenon’s blessing, he pursued his dream job with the new owners. Numbers are only part of the picture Morey’s first priority at the Celtics was customer relationship management. As he notes, “With a sports team, the bottleneck to revenue is ticket sales. You have to know what your customers want and find ways to reach new segments.” Morey has since extended his reach to player forecasting, where a model his team built forecasts prospects’ future success in the NBA. He is quick to point out that the numbers are only one data point, used in combination with psychological profiling and scouting. “Basketball is an intensely human game, where the personal aspect is very, very important. Analysis can point you in the right direction, but it’s possible to take it too far. A Danny Ainge [Celtics Executive Director of Basketball Operations] needs to integrate the analytical stuff with his knowledge and experience to make the right decision,” explains Morey. He is now working on analytical approaches for on–the–court decisions, acknowledging how difficult they are to implement. In order to make a difference, the analysis has to be applied by the coaching staff and then translated for the players to carry out. A winner–take–all talent business At MIT Sloan, Morey focused on knowledge management, an area he began to explore in jobs with Monsanto, Searle, and The MITRE Corporation during and after his undergraduate years at Northwestern. “The MIT Sloan faculty is so amazingly open,” he says. “You can develop your own ideas and then bring them to professors for critique. Everyone should use these opportunities to engage with people who have unique knowledge.” Today, Morey is teaching at MIT Sloan himself. Together with Professor Stephen Graves and Assistant Professor Shane Frederick, Morey offers a half–course on sports management, a field in which he believes MIT Sloan can be a leader. “There’s an academic argument about whether sports management is its own discipline,” says Morey. “But the sports industry is certainly unique. It is a winner–take–all talent business with aspects that are similar to nonprofit management, as for most owners the bottom line is about winning, not profit. “Also, teams used to cost less, and they tended to be owned by people who made their money in industrial businesses. That’s changing today, when sale prices run from $300 million to $1 billion and there are new, younger owners who come from venture capital, private equity, and consulting firms. The purchase is a significant portion of their portfolio, and they run the teams using an analytical approach. It adds up to a great opportunity for MBAs.”
Looks like he's a stat oriented guy and more of a technocrat than an old schooler like Dawson. Interesting.... Daryl Morey, SVP Operations and Information, Boston Celtics Daryl was a lunchtime speaker at Sloan a couple of weeks ago. He discussed his job at the Boston Celtics. He does a lot of data analysis to help the Boston GM make decisions on which players to pick/draft/trade. Pretty interesting stuff. He says that only a handful of NBA teams are using a statistical approach to help them make decisions. I can only imagine that will change over time. And since there are so few teams that use stats heavily, it is hard to break into the field. Daryl's Bio Notes: 2000 Sloan grad Consulted for 3.5 years at Parthenon Teams get most of their revenue from tickets and TV Most cost is from player salaries (60%) Winning is all about getting the right players Big reinforcing loop both ways (The better you do the more money you get the better players you can get. The worse you do, the less money you have, etc) He thinks a baseball team could be run by a computer these days (referenced Moneyball), but not true with a basketball team. Too many intangibles that are hard to measure. Basketball is more of a team game than baseball. FG%, Rebounding, Turnovers, and Free Throws are the most important stats for winning Hard to pick high school players because stats are unreliable http://www.rallenhome.com/blog/mit-sdm/2005/04/daryl-morey-svp-operations-and.html
By reading that profile, I get the feeling he's a little too oriented on the business side...not saying its a bad profile, but that kind of "MBA" type profile doesnt seem fit for a GM. Hope I'm wrong
Wait, is this the same fool who was responsible for the Celtics signing Brian Scalabrine? I hope not.
Sounds like an interesting guy. I'm curious to see how it will translate as GM. How old is he? He seems to be the new trend of young GM's that are going on in baseball.
