Talk: Quantitative Methods in Sports: Evolution and Application - Sergi Oliva, Director of Analytics & Strategy at the Philadelphia 76ers

Abstract: Starting with Baseball in the 90s, quantitative methods have creeped their way into all levels of decision-making in professional sports organizations. Even though this evolution has taken different forms and speeds depending on the sport or league, most have shared several common themes: the incremental availability of richer data sources fueled by a growing interest in their potential, the challenge in communicating actionable insights to very successful and traditionally-minded industry leaders, and, nonetheless, the overall evolution of the conventional standards towards more analytically-oriented principles. In this talk, focused primarily but not exclusively in basketball, we will have a brief look at the early stages of the field, before discussing the growth in its data sources, the type of research that was made possible, the transformational effects of some of those results in creating new strategical standards, and the challenges of implementing quantitative-based insights into the day-to-day decision-making of a sports organization.