Every team has a data-based strategy for regular season play — but the playoffs are a completely different story. In this episode of Counterpoints, we talk with Mike Trudell, a reporter who covers the Los Angeles Lakers for ESPN and other sports news outlets, about the mysterious intangibles that come to the foreground during the playoffs.

The explosion of streaming media offers fans unlimited access to sports and entertainment. So how can teams entice their audience to the events happening here and now? Sports Innovation cofounder and CEO Angela Ruggiero says success starts with understanding just how fans’ behavior has changed with the advent of digital technology — meaning, executives of sports companies and media outlets alike must be willing to completely rethink how they approach their marketing.

In football, the passing game is dominant, and putting the ball on the ground has less and less relevance to a team’s ability to score. So the question has arisen: Does the running game still matter? How do coaches and managers know when a formerly winning tactic has become obsolete? Counterpoints looks at the data.

This guide to the Fall 2019 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review summarize the issue’s key articles. The articles discuss finding better ways to collaborate; how to give customers what they’re looking for; the organized ecosystem of Dark Web cybercrime; and how algorithms can reduce bias.

Feeling pressure to become more agile and “networked,” organizations tend to overwhelm employees with collaboration demands, putting a drag on performance and engagement. But through analytics, they can scale collaboration more effectively, improve collaborative design and execution, drive planned and emergent innovations through networks, streamline work by diagnosing and reducing collaborative overload, and engage talent by identifying social capital enablers.

While giving customers what they want — and as rapidly as possible — may be a worthy goal for service organizations, Amy R. Ward at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business notes that businesses can’t always afford to do this. Her research uses probability to understand how best to align resources with customer demand and improve operational efficiency on a day-to-day basis.

Counterpoints takes on two pressing questions in the sports analytics field: the issue of information overload and whether there is such a thing as too much data, and a very different — but related — issue: Biometrics. We’ll go to the mat over whether professional athletes will be willing to share their personal biometric data in real time.

This episode of the Counterpoints podcast looks at whether cohesion analytics can quantify team chemistry — and if so, how to use that data to boost a team’s performance.

Current thinking is that the 7-foot center who used to dominate the NBA is a thing of the past. But a new analytics focus on defense shows that might not be the case. The Philadelphia 76ers’ data scientist, Ivana Saric, explains why.

Because of its sharp focus on measurable outcomes, the study of sports analytics brings many of the most critical issues in management into high relief. Through the lens of sports, there is a great deal to learn about leadership, performance management, decision-making, innovation, and, most of all, managing with data. MIT SMR’s sports analytics podcast, Counterpoints, is a great entry point to the playing field of data-driven management practice.

A herd mentality and a lack of good data have led teams to make some poor decisions about trading draft picks. Is there a better way?

Which teams make it to the college football playoffs isn’t as random as it sometimes seems, says University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Laura Albert. In this week’s Counterpoints podcast, we look at how Albert uses analytics to predict the brackets and how the football playoff selections compare to that other big college tournament, March Madness.

Companies can turn AI hype into operational hay by developing their capacity for enterprise cognitive computing. This capacity entails five capabilities: data science competence, business domain proficiency, enterprise architecture expertise, an operational IT backbone, and digital inquisitiveness. The capabilities shape and are shaped by four practices: identifying use cases, managing application learning, cocreating applications, and thinking “cognitive.”

Though the QB gets most of the spotlight, a new analysis from ESPN shows that every NFL team lives and dies by the skills and teamwork of players at the tackle, guard, and center positions in the offensive line. Counterpoints looks at the burgeoning field of O-Line analytics with ESPN’s Seth Walder.

One of the newest and most important players in the sports world isn’t a soccer phenom or an NBA all-star — it’s a multiplayer video gaming platform known as eSports. The universe of eSports relies heavily on data analytics, but the surprising twist is the role of social science analytics in this world of virtual contests between far-flung players. Counterpoints talks to eSports analytics guru Tim Sevenhuysen.

When NBA superstars are given a planned night off, the impact of their absence isn’t just felt on the basketball floor — it’s a financial issue as well.

With customized and continuous data-driven feedback becoming a new normal, managers are revisiting the role they should play in delivering, facilitating, and curating face-to-face employee feedback. Does direct managerial involvement complement or compete with data-determined performance reviews?

Elite soccer is a multibillion-dollar business, and top clubs are constantly looking for the next promising young player that they can develop into a superstar. Youth academies are one way for clubs to do this, but they have to find the players with potential before they can work with them. Counterpoints talks with Chelsea Football Club’s head of research and innovation, Ben Smith, who is on an analytics-driven hunt for star material.

What happens when a free-agent player with a hot hand and great stats gets signed to a big, long-term contract, only to perform at a mediocre level? Counterpoints examines the problem of “shirking” in professional sports by looking at the data with Richard Paulsen, who presented his paper, “New Evidence in the Study of Shirking in Major League Baseball,” at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

When teams perform consistently, it’s easy to ascribe their winning (or losing) ways to the coaching staff. But the data sometimes tells a different story. So just how much credit — or blame — for team performance should coaches get? Counterpoints looks at the evidence.