[Windhorst] East scout: “The league is overrun with strategy. I’m not sure how many people in the league are actually watching the games.” West exec: “We’re going to turn into baseball… where you have every defender between second base and right field, and no one can get a hit and it becomes boring”
Interesting snippets from Windy:
“The league is overrun with strategy,” an Eastern Conference scout said. “Honestly, I’m not sure how many people who work in the league are actually watching the games.”
“Yes, there are more graduate degrees in front offices now, but that’s only part of the picture,” a Western Conference general manager said. “The aprons force you to analyze all of your spending more and put more attention to detail on getting the most out of each salary slot. The owners put that into the rules, and the players accepted it. This is all a choice.”
“We’re going to turn into baseball if we’re not careful,” a Western Conference executive said. “Where you have every defender between second base and right field, and no one can get a hit and it becomes boring.”
After winning the title, the Celtics were bought by Bill Chisholm, who went to Dartmouth and Wharton and funded the deal with a complex layering of private equity firms putting in institutional funds to assemble his record $6 billion purchase. There are several NBA teams with private equity investors and owners who made their money in high finance, but the Celtics are at the top of that pyramid, and their methodology certainly matches.
“Let me tell you, they did not become less analytical after that,” an Eastern Conference executive said. “Private equity wants the answers to the test.”