My guest this week is Daryl Morey, who is President of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers. Daryl is a computer science graduate but has become one of the NBA’s most successful General Managers during his time with the Houston Rockets and the 76ers. Together with my friend and past guest of the show, Sam Hinkie, Daryl pioneered the analytics movement in basketball. He’s been so influential his style has its own name, “Moreyball”, a nod to Michael Lewis’s book about baseball, Moneyball. Daryl is also the co-founder of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which has become the gold standard forum for leaders in sports analytics. I had a blast talking to him about negotiation tactics, systems thinking, hiring, and a ton more. Please enjoy this great conversation with Daryl Morey. Listen to Founders podcast Founders Episode #136 A Success Story: Estee Lauder Invest Like the Best with David Senra: Passion & Pain For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus streamlines the investment research process so you can get up to speed and find answers to critical questions on companies faster and more efficiently. The Tegus platform surfaces the hard-to-get qualitative insights, gives instant access to critical public financial data through BamSEC, and helps you set up customized expert calls. It’s all done on a single, modern SaaS platform that offers 360-degree insight into any public or private company. As a listener, you can take Tegus for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes[00:03:15] - [First question] - The basic principles of sports and what makes for a great sport[00:09:54] - How resource concentration influences outcomes in various sports[00:13:13] - The degree of certainty in predicting sports outcomes based on existing data[00:16:32] - Using the concept of KPIs to optimize for certain characteristics to win games[00:18:45] - Training teams on specific systems and plays versus leveraging individual talent[00:21:07] - Why superstar athletes are key to success in basketball[00:24:02] - Dealing with constant expected value calculations to appease stakeholders[00:25:30] - Building the organization’s back office to find talented athletes[00:28:32] - How he and other GMs make organization-level decisions[00:34:12] - Why he’s involved with basketball as opposed to other sports[00:36:17] - How he uses his frameworks to figure out systems outside of mainstream sports[00:37:41] - Problems with the rules and economic factors of professional soccer[00:42:54] - Trends he’s observed in the worlds of music, movies, and books[00:45:33] - His perspective on developing one’s own career path[00:48:22] - How challenges in his youth benefited him in the long run[00:49:28] - The person he would call for advice if he was stuck in a foreign prison[00:51:01] - His emphasis on first principles and why he supports free speech[00:52:31] - Takeaways from a Harvard negotiation class he took[00:57:07] - The power of refining the terms and definitions of a deal post-negotiation[00:58:51] - The four people in the world that intrigue him most[01:01:40] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him 

In this episode, Daryl Morey, President of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers and pioneer of the analytics movement in basketball, talks about negotiation tactics, systems thinking, and hiring strategies in the basketball world. They also discuss the importance of identifying what you're optimizing for in sports, the need for a comeback mechanism in college football, and the value of struggle and independent thinking in shaping one's perspective.

Daryl Morey, the President of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, shares his innovative approach to building a championship team through analytics and game theory. He discusses the intricacies of team dynamics and the value of superstar players, revealing strategic insights like the two-for-one scoring technique. The conversation also touches on parallels between basketball and poker, emphasizing emotional detachment in decision-making. Moreover, they delve into the 'hot hand' phenomenon and how data shapes performance in high-pressure situations.

NBA executives Daryl Morey, Monte McNair, and Nico Harrison discuss the hidden factors and behind-the-scenes challenges of sports negotiations. They explore the complexities of internal team dynamics, strategic decision-making, media influence, and negotiating styles in high-stakes deals, shedding light on the intricacies of building championship-level teams.

You might think that human beings, exhausted by competing for resources and rewards in the real world, would take it easy and stick to cooperation in their spare time. But no; we are fascinated by competition, and invent games and sports to create artificial competition just for fun. These competitions turn out to be wonderful laboratories for exploring concepts like optimization, resource allocation, strategy, and human psychology. Today’s guest, Daryl Morey, is a world leader in thinking analytically about sports, as well as the relationship between impersonal data and the vagaries of human behavior. He’s currently an executive in charge of the Philadelphia 76ers, but I promise you don’t need to be a fan of the Sixers or of basketball or of sports in general to enjoy this wide-ranging conversation.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Daryl Morey received a bachelor’s in computer science from Northwestern University, and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He served as general manager for the Houston Rockets from 2007 to 2020, and since November 2020 has been the President for Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers. He is founder and co-chair of the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. He was voted NBA Executive of the Year in 2018.Philadelphia 76ersBasketball-Reference pageWikipediaTwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.