A lot of the sports analytic movement has worked towards maximizing productivity.
“There has been research on the draft on how you value certain draft picks—whether you trade down,” Adler added.
Basketball statisticians have also recently developed stats such as player efficiency ratings (PER) and value added—which dig deeper than just points, assists, rebounds, and turnovers—to rate a player’s true value. Last year, the NBA MVP LeBron James did not actually lead the league in value added; instead, that distinction went to James Harden. While players may not shoot for “value added” titles the way they do for scoring titles, these can often be a more accurate indicator of the impact a single player has on his team’s ability to win.
In front offices, decision-making is often driven by these statistics.
“There are a ton of different decisions that a basketball team needs to make,” Rosenfeld said. “As a fan, you kind of get an idea of what decisions are important for a team… but once you are actually working for a team, you end up with even more questions. Most of the front offices are trying to answer these questions. The difference with me is I—using statistics—try to look at them, hopefully, different than other people.”
In order to attain a lifelong dream, both Adler and Rosenfeld did not get to their positions without hard work. A brief look at Rosenfeld’s resume shows the extensive list of internships and jobs he held before he ended up with the Bobcats. A statistics concentrator at Harvard, he started working in the NBA as an intern in the basketball operations department for the Rockets, working remotely while at Harvard from 2007 to 2009.
Through a series of serendipitous events he became the assistant GM of a Chinese basketball team, the Shanghai Sharks, taking a year off from the college in 2009-2010 to fulfill his duties.
“Unlike the Rockets [job], I was on-site…. That was my life,” Rosenfeld explained.
In the summer after his junior year, Rosenfeld consulted for the Ukrainian national team while they were at the FIBA European Basketball Championships, and finally he was the team manager for the Harvard men’s basketball team last year.
Adler also started early, working as an intern for the New England Patriots the summer after high school. Yet, like many interns at major corporations, he was not immediately doing the glory jobs. He continued to work for the Patriots while at Harvard and even joined the Crimson football team as a team assistant.
From there he bounced between leagues doing remote work for the Cleveland Browns as a “Football Administration Analyst” and working in the MLB labor relations department as a legal and economic intern. He fully credits his ability to land later jobs, however, to his early days with the Patriots.
“The way I fell into the Browns job was because I happened to meet someone when I was graduating high school who works for the Patriots,” Adler said. “I did total grunt work for them and things went from there.”
Before taking the Jaguars job, Adler was enrolled at the Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He also worked for the Boston Consulting Group for a year.
Both Adler and Rosenfeld emphasized that the most important thing going forward is that they love what they do. They feel as if they are a part of a team and whatever work they put in goes towards helping their team win.
“All we are trying to do is weigh things equally and overcome the human biases,” Adler said.
When his team suited up to play against the Packers two Sundays ago at Lambeau Field, Adler said it was one of the best moments of his career.
“I woke up this morning and I was headed, you know, I was heading over to Lambeau field to go to work,” Adler said. “My job is just pretty amazing. I go to the stadium every day and play around with football stats the whole day, which I would be doing anyway.”