DESCRIPTION

This panel features industry professionals who focus on evaluating teams and personnel from an analytical perspective. Their work experience ranges from prominent roles for NBA teams to headline writers for major sports media outlets to authors of basketball analytics books. Topics may include evaluative techniques, the evolution of analytics in player analysis, and other research.

 PANELISTS

David Mondress has 20 years of experience in professional basketball. Currently, David is VP Contract Research and Basketball Operations with BDA Sports Management (BDA). BDA is one of the most recognized names in professional sports player management; representing and managing the careers of players in over 20 countries worldwide. Currently BDA represents approximately 35 NBA players (including such well known players as Steve Nash, Yao Ming and Carmelo Anthony), 55 International players and 3 WNBA players.

David is certified as a Player Agent by the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), and is involved in all aspects of client representation. His areas of expertise include player contract negotiation, contract dispute resolution and NBA draft preparation.

Prior to joining BDA, David spent over ten years at the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) where he became one of the foremost experts on the NBA salary cap and collective bargaining agreement. At the NBPA David was the Players' union in-house salary cap expert, providing both players and agents with collective bargaining interpretation, advice and education. In this capacity, David was a key member of the NBPA Collective Bargaining Negotiation Team.

In addition to his professional basketball experience, David has years of experience in corporate finance and financial litigation. He holds a CPA; and is accredited in Business Valuation by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.


Dean Oliver is in his second season with the Nuggets since being named the Director of Quantitative Analysis in October 2006.

Oliver is considered one of the leading statistical analysts in NBA circles. His work provides a quantified analytical perspective on draft pick and trade evaluations, as well as game strategy and how players fit together.

He previously served as consultant to the Seattle SuperSonics management and was an advance scout with long-time Laker assistant coach Bill Bertka for four years. He was also an assistant coach on his college team in his senior year. Oliver authored Basketball on Paper, a philosophical statistical book on how to build a better team, which was endorsed by legendary coach Dean Smith and highly acclaimed statistical analyst Bill James. He now serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports and on the executive board for the Association of Professional Basketball Research.


Ken Pomeroy has been doing quantitative analysis on college basketball for about ten years. He first experimented with team power ratings, before delving into the finer points of team analysis three years ago when he began posting college statistics on his website, kenpom.com. More recently, Pomeroy’s work has expanded into player analysis as well, where he now computes advanced metrics on all college basketball players in Division I.

Ken currently writes for Basketball Prospectus, after spending two years writing for espn.com. He has also contributed his statistical analysis to the Houston Rockets and Baylor University. He has a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Virginia Tech and a Master’s degree in atmospheric science from the University of Wyoming. Ken is a meteorologist by trade, and currently lives in Salt Lake City.


Chris Wallace is the General Manager of the Memphis Grizzlies.


Michael Zarren - A lifelong Celtics fan and season ticket holder, Michael Zarren is the Celtics’ Assistant Executive Director of Basketball Operations and Associate Counsel. Now in his fifth year with the team, Mike is widely recognized as one of the leaders in the field of advanced statistical analysis of basketball players and teams, and is an important part of the team’s player personnel evaluation and strategic planning processes. In addition, Mike is the team’s salary cap and legal expert and is responsible for the development of new technologies for team use, including the team’s best-in-class statistical database and video archive/delivery system. Mike was previously a management consultant, during which time he performed econometric and other quantitative analyses for Fortune 500 firms across a wide variety of industries. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, and of the University of Chicago, where he worked with "Freakonomics" author Steven Levitt. Mike is also a published board game author and a member of the bars of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the states of New York and Massachusetts.

 MODERATOR