4th Annual SPEIA Basketball Analytics Summit Comes to Durham This Weekend

DURHAM, N.C. –  You don’t want to miss the fourth annual SPEIA Basketball Analytics Summit Friday and Saturday at N.C. Central University and the American Underground that will feature keynote speeches from the best in the sports industry.

Here’s the lineup – Sam Edgemon, a senior consultant and data scientist at the Statistical Analysis System; Kirk Goldsberry, an NBA analyst at ESPN, author of “Sprawlball” and professor at UT-Austin; Ken Pomeroy, a leading college basketball sports analytic and writer for The Athletic; Oris Stuart, the executive vice president, chief diversity and inclusion officer at the NBA; and Dean Oliver: the godfather of basketball analytics.

“The word ‘Sports Analytics’ wasn’t invented when I started doing this,” Oliver said. “When I was in college, this would be the ‘80s, 30 years ago at this time, I was playing basketball and I had been able to coach on the team, but when I watched the game I just started writing down what I saw, and not just recording stats, but recording the flow of the ball and things like that. And because I was doing that, I noticed other things about the game. … I didn’t realize that I was giving it a structure.” 

Oliver, the current vice president of data science at True Media Networks, Inc., an analytics company that works with players, teams and media to boost performance, has worked with the Denver Nuggets and Sacramento Kings. He developed the Quarterback Rating (QBR) metric during his first project at ESPN. Also, Oliver published  “Basketball on Paper” in 2004 about his early findings is basketball analytics. 

“It’s funny,” Oliver said when asked about the future of basketball analytics. “Everyone is talking about the next level data we can get, and I know there’s efforts to collect arm, and shoulder, and head position and leg and people are working on the technology to do that. And that will be coming out.” 

Oliver added, “So there will continue to be an explosion of data. The hard part that is more in the long term is how do we analyze that data?” 

The Summit this weekend will provide the opportunity for locals to learn and interact with other professionals in sports. 

“We live in a world that’s driven by data,” Oliver said. “Understand this a great opportunity to understand how data is actually making a difference in a very prominent industry that we’re all familiar with. Finally, just the opportunity to talk to a lot interesting and interested people in basketball. … It is intimate, so you can definitely talk to people who are really official.” 

The agenda for the Summit can be found HERE, and the registration LINK is still open.