Harvard Sports Analysis Collective

Mike Zarren, JD ‘04, Assistant Executive Director of Basketball Operations/Associate Counsel of the NBA Champion Boston Celtics, spoke to a group of HSAC members this past Wednesday night in Winthrop House.

Mike spoke about his role with the team, the use of statistical analysis in professional basketball, and also provided advice and background regarding the process of landing a job in pro sports.

His path to a career in pro sports, as is typical, began with free work.  He started with the Celtics while still in law school at Harvard, and his main role was providing statistical research and analysis to the team—a relatively young field of research at the time, and still not fully embraced in professional basketball today.  Mike interned for them for two years before landing a full time paid position, and has been with them ever since, handling their statistical analysis and legal work.

In terms of getting a job in this field, he summed it by saying that, unless you are a player, or know the owner or general manager, you must be willing to work for free and have the ability to provide either specialized skills or extremely creative and innovative ideas.  This may go without saying, as the number of jobs in the sports world is small compared to the amount of people looking to enter the field. 

Here is a more full biography of Mike 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.

Jason is a sophomore living in Currier House. He is most interested in basketball, football and baseball, and his work is used by an NBA team. He is majoring in Statistics.