Live data from Hacker News

Like basketball? Want to work in the NBA?

news.ycombinator.com

1–4 of 4 posts

Like basketball? Want to work in the NBA?

#1
My name is Ben Falk, I'm the Basketball Analytics Manager for the Portland Trail Blazers. (If you've seen the movie or read the book "Moneyball", that's the kind of thing we do - attempting to apply statistical analysis and evidence based reasoning to give us an edge when trading or drafting players and making coaching decisions.) We're always on the lookout for people with the right mix of programming/computer skills and interest in basketball and the NBA. I figured this would be a good place to post to try and find those who have that specific overlap of skills and interest.

If you are one of those people we are potentially offering an internship or a part-time position, depending on what works for both of us. You would be working closely with the scouting and coaching staffs as well as our analytics team to help improve our processes. Living in/moving to Portland is not required, and we can work out details like that once we've determined you're a good fit.

If interested, please drop me a note explaining your skills and interest level and I'll be in touch. You can email me at basketballanalytics [at] trailblazers [dot] com.

I'm happy to answer questions in the comments below.

Thanks, Ben

Re: Like basketball? Want to work in the NBA?

#4
post #2

could you reveal more details about what the position entails from a technical side? What programming languages, experience, or app stacks for instance?

Honestly, I deliberately left it vague on that point simply because, if we find the right person, I believe we can work to accommodate either way. We currently work using MySQL for data storage, PHP for some scripting, web development and data display, and R and Excel for different levels of data analysis. But if someone comes along with different preferences for languages/tools, that's not to say we could not adapt. And, likewise I would anticipate that if someone comes along with a high interest level but without the requisite experience with, say, PHP, that it could be learned from their end.

I hope by leaving it this open-ended I don't discourage people from inquiring, but I guess my point is that we are more interested in finding the right people with the right mix of skills and interest and I think some of the other details can be worked out after.