From Words to Numbers: Steve Weinman’s Journey in Basketball Analytics
Author: Marshall V. King
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Steve Weinman’s Journey from Journalism to Basketball Strategy
Steve Weinman couldn’t have imagined the job he has.
The vice president of basketball strategy for the Chicago Bulls said, “I’m the son of two math teachers who shamed the family by majoring in journalism and kind of wound up through happenstance and some good fortune stumbling back into a world of working with a lot of numbers in computer programming.”
Weinman told Notre Dame students in the Sports Analytics MSBA program during a visit in December about how he came to oversee analyzing on-court data and providing it to the coaches of an NBA franchise.
From Journalism to NBA Analytics
In 2006, he went to the University of Missouri to major in journalism. He thought it would be a way to have a career adjacent to sports by writing about it. He loved the game of basketball. “I was an extremely balanced high school basketball player from the standpoint that I blended an appalling lack of physical tools with a similar lack of skills,” he said. “But I also know that as a 20-something, I spent a lot of time in class going, ‘Hey, when can go back to the gym to play pick-up?’”
During his time in college, he landed an internship at the NBA league office. “I was the intern, the summer of 2009, who annoyed every other intern because every time we had a meeting with senior leadership or other staffers, I was the guy who said, ‘Hey is anybody here working on basketball analytic stuff?’”
In the last week of his 10-week internship, he asked the right person, who directed him to the department building the statistical data warehouse of the league. After he graduated, he came back and joined the league office as an associate. He persisted and got into that department.
Pro baseball had started focusing on data and pro basketball followed. He rode that wave and after a stint in the league office, joined the Chicago Bulls. Over the last 11 years, he’s developed tools to gather and analyze the growing body of data collected about players and their performance on the court. The players are the product he’s supporting and they all have the same goal of winning games.
His job is to provide the coaching staff and front office with as much information as possible. “You are constantly synthesizing information from different sources, weighing risks, weighing different variables, and trying to make the right choice whether that’s about how are we going to attack this defensive coverage. Whether it’s about what lineup combinations are we going to use as a coaching staff. Or as a front office, how should we make choices about the salary cap or how are we going to allocate our resources as we head into free agency?”
Coach Billy Donovan and Steve Weinman’s Impactful Partnership
Coach Billy Donovan and the other coaches value the work of Weinman and others in the small department. Weinman watched Donovan’s teams win national championships at Florida. Now they collaborate. “We have built out a pretty substantial library for our coaching staff that our coaches and video coordinators have access to every day,” said Weinman. “It makes my job a lot more fun when you have a staff that’s engaged.”
Weinman had fun relating his story to the group of students and has heard from a number of them since the visit.
Adam Klene handles a different kind of data for the Bulls. As executive director of business strategy and analytics, he works on the business side of the pro franchise. He’s assessing ticket pricing, particularly in the era of secondary markets and sponsorship deals. He’s a 2011 Notre Dame alum who delighted in talking with the students where he got his undergraduate degree.
During graduate school, he interned with the Cleveland Guardians. He went to work for Deloitte Consulting in Chicago and after several years there realized that working in sports would be more enjoyable than what he was doing and had an opportunity with the Bulls.
He loves using data to support decision-making. “I’d say one of the philosophies both Steve and I have that is very apparent is data doesn’t make decisions for you. It just helps you make a better decision.”
Both men told the students that they’ll help them any way they can. They both see their own path as full of people who helped them land in a sports job they love. “My goal was to be able to at least share some my experience. I’m very appreciative and thankful for all of the mentors and people in my life that have gotten me here,” said Klene. “I’ve been super lucky that I got this role and so I’m thankful for everybody that’s led the way for me, and I always like to get to pay it forward. So it was really rewarding for us as well.”
