Counterpoints: The Sports Analytics Podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review

In pairing right-handed defensemen with left-handed defensemen, many NHL teams believe they are following a proven and, seemingly obvious, formula. If defensemen play on their strong side, they will be more effective at their jobs. Conventional wisdom on what works can codify with surprising speed in sports. But when something becomes an accepted best practice, we tend to stop asking how it became so and, more dangerously, we often become blind to the evidence that the practice may not be best at all. Tyler Dellow, senior analyst at The Athletic NHL, believes this is precisely the case with defensemen pairings in the NHL.

Does everyone benefit equally from the same amount of sleep? And how exactly does one measure its specific impact on performance — athletic or otherwise? After all, if you’re going to convince a young athlete to give up party time or practice time to grab some extra z’s, you’d better have some serious data to make your case. Kristen Holmes-Winn, vice president of Performance Optimization at WHOOP and former head coach of the Princeton field hockey team, joins the show to defend the hypothesis: Sleep is the greatest legal advantage in sports. 

It’s easy to understand why winning teams would draw more fans — a great team features exciting players, entertaining competition, and the expectation of feeling satisfied once the game is over. But are those qualities actually tied to wins and losses? Or can any team with the right combination of potential and promotion draw a large audience, regardless of what happens during the game? Jessica Gelman, CEO of Kraft Analytics Group and cofounder and cochair of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, joins the show to defend the hypothesis: Teams can win at selling tickets without winning on the field.

Basketball IQ is one of the game’s holy analytical grails. We know it’s there, or at least we think we know it’s there. But what is it even made of? Intuition? Vision? Knowledge of the game? Or is it simply natural intelligence and brain processing speed applied to a specific context? Former director of sports analytics at ESPN Ben Alamar is one of sports’ leading proponents for and experts in basketball IQ. In this episode, Ben joins the show to defend the hypothesis: NBA teams would make fewer draft mistakes if they measured basketball IQ.

This is a sports analytics show for sports professionals, data junkies, and fans alike. It’s a show for anyone who knows that numbers are about much more than the score. Hosts Ben Shields (MIT Sloan School of Management) and Paul Michelman (MIT Sloan Management Review) engage the world’s premier sports analytics experts in a lively, occasionally controversial, conversation about what’s really happening both on and off the field. New episodes launch November 15.