The Hidden Statistics That Control The NBA - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a data scientist, economist and author. Basketball is one of the most popular sports on the planet. Seth has used advanced AI to statistically analyse everything about the players, their backgrounds, hand-span, height, first names and more to uncover some of the wildest trends in the game. Expect to learn what percentage of American men over 7 feet tall are in the NBA, where there is a huge outlier of the most common name of all NBA players, who the best height-adjusted player of all time is, just how important genetics are in basketball, whether the Draft is effective and much more... - 00:00 The Percentage of 7ft+ NBA Players 04:34 Is Being Tall Really a Basketball Advantage? 08:53 Why Americans Are Over-Represented in Basketball 12:21 How Genetic is Basketball Ability? 21:44 Chris is the Most Common Name of Black NBA Players 28:13 What Determines Who Chokes Under Pressure? 35:04 What Warren Buffet & Paul Millsap Have in Common 42:57 How Effective is the NBA Draft? 48:59 The Advantage of Being Able to Make Yourself Better 54:22 How Seth Used AI to Write About Basketball 1:00:56 Seth’s Goal to Write 100 Books - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  What percentage of seven footers are in the NBA?

• 0:04Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  To the best of our knowledge, it's about one in seven, which is enormous. Pablo Torres, the first guy who calculated this. I've done a similar calculation and everyone seems to unite around this number around one in seven, which is just insane. Is there any other pursuit glamorous pursuit where one trait gives you a one in seven chance of reaching the absolute pinnacle of that field? I don't think so.

• 0:28Chris Williamson?

  Think about all the six in seven people that could have been on an NBA player's wage.

• 0:33Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, they must feel terrible.

• 0:35Chris Williamson?

  Dude, you blew it.

• 0:37Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I guess they can, a lot of them are probably playing abroad. You know, they're probably our basketball players regardless and make and having fun and, you know, make a living playing a game, but they're not getting the NBA wage for sure.

• 0:48Chris Williamson?

  How rare is seven foot height?

• 0:51Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Being seven footer above is one in 650,000 height.

• 1:00Chris Williamson?

  Wow, that is such a genetic lottery.

• 1:03Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, you're basically, I, yeah, I don't think there's any other gene that gives you such a chance of being a famous multimillionaire.

• 1:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's a good point. What else do you learn about height?

• 1:15Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So one of the things interesting about height is, and basketball is each inch roughly doubles your chances of making the NBA, like throughout the height distribution. So if you're six foot tall, you have basically twice the chances of becoming an NBA player than if you're five foot 11. If you're six one, twice the chances than if you're six feet, all the way out till if you're seven two, you have twice the chance than you're seven one, like throughout the height distribution. What that means is just there's this enormous difference in probability of reaching the NBA. We said one in seven chance if you're a seven footer. If you're under five 10, which is the average height of an American male, you have a one in 3.8 million chance of reaching the NBA. Like it's basically impossible. I mean, there are exceptions, you know, I talk a lot in the book about one of my favorite

• 2:00Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  players, Muggsy Bogues, five foot three and played 14 seasons in the NBA. So it's not impossible, but it's pretty close to impossible and probably not worth putting much energy even trying.

• 2:12Chris Williamson?

  What are the disadvantages of being tall from a player perspective?

• 2:17Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  There is, if you look at the tallest. Humans in history, many of them are over eight feet tall and just about all of them, it's due to a thyroid disease. You literally, there's a growth hormone that just overproduces, uh, growth hormone is overproduced. There have been, there has been at least one NBA player who got to his height through a thyroid disease. That's George Murison. Some people might remember him. He was, he also was an actor for a little bit. Uh, and he was literally, it was a disease that gave him that height. His parents were average height. And if you're, uh, that, uh, tall just from a disease, you're gonna have all kinds of problems. A lot of the tallest people in history, very few of the tallest people in history even make it past the age of 40.

• 3:02Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  But I think one of the other things that's interesting is that seven footers or just taller NBA players in general are just way worse athletes, any way we can measure it. They jump much less high, they're much slower, they're worse shooters, they are, this kind of surprised me, I don't think anybody showed this before, they're worse in the clutch. They can't handle pressure to the same degree shorter NBA players can. And I think the reason for this is just because the select, the advantage of being tall is so enormous that you kinda don't have to be as good at anything else. So, you know, if you're six feet tall and you're competing against millions of other people for that, that point guard spot, you better be an insane athlete.

• 3:43Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  You know, the six foot NBA players, they run as fast as a sprinter, they jump as high as a high jumper, uh, they shoot as well as anybody in the world can shoot, uh, they can handle pressure incredibly. They're just so good to, to beat out millions of other people for that spot. If you're seven feet tall and you're competing with dozens of other men for your spot, you don't have to be that good. You just have to be one in seven good. So, you know, the average seven footer, his vertical leap is only a little bit higher than the average person could, could achieve with enormous practice. Uh, he's slower than most, than an average runner on a high school track team. Uh, he shoots worse than an average high school basketball, uh, player. He handles pressure worse than an average high school basketball player.

• 4:28Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  He's just not that. Great, but he is really, really tall.

• 4:33Chris Williamson?

  Well, it begs the question, why are tall players so prioritized? If they're less good psychologically, cardiovascularly, physically, whatever, why, why do they keep getting selected?

• 4:48Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Well, because they are, it is an advantage. They grab more rebounds, they block more shots. I mean, the, the basket is up there. Or maybe, yeah, the basket is up there. The basket's not in the ground, the basket's in the sky. You know, 10 feet above, above the ground. And I think when that's the case, it's a huge advantage to be really tall, to be able to reach higher, to be able to get higher, to block shots, to grab rebounds, to do all these things, to be able to get your shot off without being blocked, without it being blocked.

• 5:17Chris Williamson?

  I wondered whether you were going to have some sort of an insight, Moneyball style insight, where you were going to say, all of the NBA teams need to start drafting more six foot two people because, you know, the trade off that you get for athleticism from a wider pool of potential people is greater than the advantage you get from being 7'1" or whatever.

• 5:39Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  No, I don't think that's true. I mean, it is legitimately true that seven, you know, Shaquille O'Neal dominated the NBA for many seasons, even though, you know, I'm a better free throw shooter than Shaquille O'Neal. Well, that's one of the core skills of basketball. And I, who am not particularly good and never play, can hit a higher percent of my free throws than Shaquille O'Neal can. But he legitimately, I wouldn't say, you know, to the Lakers, hey, have you thought of picking up Seth? He shoots free throws better than Shaq. Like, I legitimately think Shaq dominated basketball. But it is kind of a weird unfair advantage. It does, it does feel almost like a little, I don't know, as a fan of the game, it feels like it's almost a bug in the game that height is such an advantage. Like if they, like the ideal sport,

• 6:24Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  you know, you shouldn't be able to reach the top of a sport the way George Merson did through a growth hormone disorder. Like that shouldn't, you know, it feels like off in, in how, you know, an athletic pursuit, what, what it should take to reach the top of that athletic pursuit. But yeah, I'm not telling players, you know, don't, you know. Caught Joel Embiid because he can't jump as high as, you know, a six foot player like he still does help the team, but he definitely, it definitely is true that they are worse athletes.

• 6:56Chris Williamson?

  Yes, laughs in thyroid disorder like the.

• 7:03Chris Williamson?

  All right. So what about, um, are you able to compare like for like different players of different heights and say, what if Muggsy Bogues had been six, seven, what, how good would have he been?

• 7:15Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, I was able to mathematically figure this out, which was the most fun I've ever had on any study I've ever done. You know, as a shorter man, I'm about five, nine, I think on a good day. So I think I kind of did this calculation. I ranked people, I called it mugsies, which stands for metric for understanding game, given sporting individuals effectiveness and size. And I ranked every player, you know, the, the math is in an appendix for those who are really curious, uh, how good they would be if they were the same height, how many mugsies they'd have. And number one is Muggsy Bogues, who's just achievement is so ridiculously insane to be an NBA player for 14 seasons, even if he wasn't the greatest NBA player. He was a decent

• 8:00Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  NBA player for 14 seasons at five foot, three inches tall. It's insane. You know, other players, Earl Boykins and Spud Webb rank really high. Michael Jordan, interestingly, still ranks number nine on a height adjusted.

• 8:12Chris Williamson?

  Despite being like six, six or something.

• 8:13Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah. Cause he was so, so good. So he is legitimately one of the greatest at his craft you've ever seen. But if Muggsy and Michael were the same height, I think Muggsy, I think it's unambiguous in the data, the way I've cut the data, that Muggsy would be the more dominant player. Muggsy would be the one who would be making the documentaries about who you think is the quintessential at mastering his crafts, at mastering his craft, at determination, at work ethic, and all these other things that we now associate with Michael. Michael had enormous talent, enormous drive, enormous work ethic, enormous anything. And he also had enormous height, uh, which, you know, some of these other guys didn't have.

• 8:54Chris Williamson?

  What do, like, why is it that players come from the countries that they do? Obviously, basketball wildly overrepresented by the USA, but if.

• 9:07Chris Williamson?

  One in seven people over seven feet tall. Why are Scandinavian countries that I think have got the tallest average height in the world? Why have we not seen loads of Danes or Norwegians or something?

• 9:21Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, so a big thing is popularity of basketball obviously. Obviously plays into how many basketball players a country produces. And there are really only three regions of the world where basketball is extraordinarily popular.

• 9:38Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  The United States where it was invented, the Baltic States, former Yugoslavia. So if you're growing up playing basketball, you know, the average person, I'm sure there are countless people around the world who if they started practicing when they were five, could shoot a ball like Steph Curry or could do, you know, everything with a basketball like James Harden. But they never even think to do that. They're playing soccer, they're playing some other sports. So that's really important. There are some subtle things that go into how how many basketball players a country produces. One that I found, which I found very, very interesting, and after you say it, it's extremely obvious that predicts how many basketball players a country produces is volleyball popularity.

• 10:19Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Because there's only one other sport that uses height the same way basketball does, and that's volleyball. So the average volleyball player has basically the same body type as the average small forward in the NBA. About six foot eight on average, you know, reasonably thin, enormous sleeper. And I didn't know this, I'm such a, you know, an American that I'm like, who the hell cares about volleyball? So I excuse my naivete, but in writing this book, I found that,

• 10:50Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  you know, in Iran, volleyball is five times more popular than basketball. And there are numerous countries around the world where volleyball is more popular than basketball. It's more popular than basketball in Brazil, in Bulgaria, in Russia, in Italy, in Puerto Rico. And what you see is in these countries where volleyball is more popular than basketball, you see fewer NBA players than you'd otherwise expect. And particularly fewer forwards than you'd otherwise expect because a lot of. A lot of these taller people, these six foot eight, six foot nine people are playing volleyball instead. You know, in the United States, Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James, when they grew their enormous height, I don't think anybody was like, hey, have you thought of spiking a ball? You know, that's, that's the dream.

• 11:31Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  But the guys who grow to be six eight, six nine, six 10 in Bulgaria, the dream is to spike a volleyball, which is a horrible financial decision. You know, like the, I, I think I talked about this player from Bulgaria, who leaps higher than anybody has ever been measured in the NBA. And he makes 300,000 euros a year, which is a great salary. That's not, that's not terrible, but that is so far below the NBA minimum salary.

• 11:57Chris Williamson?

  That's someone's shoe allowance for one week in the NBA.

• 12:01Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, you, I, I, you know, I, I, if any, if any enormous men in Bulgaria or Brazil or Iran are listening to this podcast right now, I want to tell you, practice your free throws, not your spiking. That's where the money is in, in the world. That, that's, that's the, the real win, I would say.

• 12:21Chris Williamson?

  Just how genetically predisposed or predetermined is basketball success?

• 12:29Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Enormously, basketball is enormously genetic, more genetic than pretty much others, any other sport we can measure. The way to see this is the prevalence of identical twins in basketball. There have been enormous number of pairs of identical twins who have reached the NBA. 11 pairs of twins have reached the NBA. All 11 of them have been identical. And this is not true in other sports. More than 10% of brother, pairs of brothers in the NBA have been identical twins, way higher than other sports. That's a dead giveaway that genetics are driving basketball ability. Because identical twins, unlike fraternal twins or unlike other brothers, share 100% of their genes, not 50% of their genes.

• 13:13Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So if one happens to get a really good draw of genetics, the other is going to get that same draw. And I did a calculation that probably more than half of I, i- i- if, if a player is in the NBA and he has an identical twin. He has a more than 50% chance of also being in the NBA. Like, if you get that same draw of genetics, you're like destined to be an amazing player as well. Now, a huge reason for this, of course, is because height is so important and height is very genetic, about 80% genetic. But a lot of other skills that are important, a lot of other traits that are important in basketball, hand size, arm length, wingspan, vertical leap, sprinting speed, also really, really genetic.

• 13:58Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Basketball seems like the sport designed in a lab to rely on genetics. Like, just, it heavily uses the skills that are 70, 80, 90% genetics and doesn't really use the skills that are 20, 30, 40% genetic that some other sports do.

• 14:16Chris Williamson?

  What are the skills that are 20, 30, 40%?

• 14:19Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So, reaction time, handedness, whether you're a lefty or righty, is much less genetic. Hand-eye coordination, much less genetic, so something like shooting in the Olympic sport, which is really hand-eye coordination, that's not going to be

• 14:35Chris Williamson?

  But how can you say that basketball isn't hand-eye coordination?

• 14:38Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, no, there is definitely importance of hand-eye coordination, but just relative to the other sport, you know, relative to baseball, for example, which is all hand-eye coordination. To hit a bat, you know, all of baseball is being able to, you know, hit, get the swing to hit the ball, which is hand-eye coordination. Or, uh, reaction time, reflexes, that's not as genetic. That baseball is just so dependent on that. Whereas basketball, the skills that are more important, height, wingspan, you know, vertical leap.

• 15:10Chris Williamson?

  Why is, why is hand size so important?

• 15:14Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, that actually, I hadn't realized until I wrote this book. Basically, the ability to palm a ball is, I always got to get my hand in the screen. The ability to palm a ball. Now, I reveal I do not have Yonit or Kawhi Leonard hands. Another reason I could never be in NBA.

• 15:33Chris Williamson?

  Tiny girl hand that you're waving around there.

• 15:36Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  The Donald Trump hands.

• 15:39Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  But, uh, I, uh...

• 15:42Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Being able to palm a ball hugely valuable to grab a rebound with one hand to be able to dribble better with the ability to palm a ball really, really valuable. Phil Jackson coached famously coached both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. And he was asked if you could pick one player, who would you pick? And he said, Michael Jordan, because Jordan had enormous hands and Kobe Bryant didn't. And Kobe Bryant admitted the one thing he changed about his body is he wished he had bigger hands. So it's kind of known in the basketball world that hands are valuable and a lot of all time greats had enormous hands even for their height, you know, whether it's Giannis or Wilt or Shaq.

• 16:25Chris Williamson?

  How big do these hands get?

• 16:27Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  12 inch, 12 inch hand width, you know, the average is about eight inches. So just very, very, you know, a foot, yeah, like this is like a foot long. Yeah.

• 16:37Chris Williamson?

  That's insane.

• 16:38Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  That's insane. Yeah, the hands and you could look at pictures of, you know, Kawhi Leonard is another player with legendarily large hands, you know, look at pictures of his hands, they're freakish hands and it turns out that as NBA teams have known that hand size is really important, but it doesn't seem like they quite knew just how important it was. That if you look at the draft, you know, at the NBA Combine, they measure players' hands, how the hand width of players and players with wide hands historically have done better, you know, by advanced metrics than you'd predict based on their, based on their draft spot. And players with, you know, tiny hands, the Donald Trump hands, they're just awful players.

• 17:22Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I think 17 of 19 players who had hands below eight inches, below average, performed below their draft spot and most of them just couldn't even be NBA players. So I think it's known that hand size is important. I don't think it's been appreciated just how important it is that it is up there with the height and the wingspan, the skills, the traits that we know are really, really important, or the vertical leap.

• 17:46Chris Williamson?

  Are there any other sports that you know of that are highly genetically influenced in the same way that volleyball and basketball are?

• 17:54Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Track and field seems to be very genetically influenced, also dominated by identical twins. You know, if you look at track and field, the Olympic track and field athletes, the percent of same-sex siblings that are identical twins is up there with basketball. And I think sprinting speed particularly seems also very genetic. That, you know, Usain Bolt or whatever, you know, I want to bet on his son to be a tremendous runner. So that is another sport that is highly, highly genetic.

• 18:31Chris Williamson?

  How important are your parents beyond the genetics thing?

• 18:36Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, so the average American male has a 1 in 36,000 chance of reaching the NBA. The average son of an NBA player has a 1 in 43 chance of reaching the NBA. So 1 in 36.

• 18:48Chris Williamson?

  Are you able to, 1 in 36 to 1 in 43?

• 18:52Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  1 in 36,000.

• 18:53Chris Williamson?

  To 1 in 43, are you able to control for the physical inheritance, like the height and all the rest of it?

• 19:00Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  A little bit, it's a little hard to do, but it clearly, so that's a 744 times higher chance of reaching the NBA than, you know, a son of an NBA player. Now, a lot of that is genetics, but it's pretty clear it's not all genetics. And if you have a father who was a professional player, was an NBA player, you're going to get really good coaching from an early age. And one of the things I saw in the data is sons of NBA players on many dimensions, they look very similar to other NBA players, you know, they, they have similar heights, they have similar weights, their stats are pretty similar mostly. But they shoot free throws extraordinarily well. So the average NBA player shoots free throws 75%, at a 75% clip.

• 19:44Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Sons of NBA players shoot free throws at an 80% clip. And that's a 5 percentage points, a very big difference in free throw shooting. And 8% of the top 50 free throw shooters of all time have been sons of NBA players, whereas only 2% of NBA players more generally are sons of NBA players. The greatest free throw shooter of all time, Steph Curry, son of an NBA player, Dell Curry. And you, and you see just, you know, Devin Booker.

• 20:14Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Uh, yeah, a lot, many, many NBA play, uh, Klay Thompson, uh, many NBA players, extraordinary free throw shooters. One of the things that's interesting, and, and, okay, so why is that? Well, form is so important in shooting. And if you have an NBA player for a father, they're going to be helping you on a form, your form for very, from a very young age. Uh, and, and that's a huge advantage in working, working your shot from a very young age is just a huge advantage. One thing you see among NBA players, it's very interesting, uh, NBA players, their sons, they tend to be shorter than they were because there's regression to the mean.

• 20:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So, uh, you know, Klay Thompson's father was a number one pick as a center.

• 21:03Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  He was six foot 10 and he was about a 60% free throw shooter, not extraordinary free throw shooter. Klay Thompson's only six foot six, but he's an 80% plus free throw shooter. So what you see is they, the physical traits, they regress to the mean, but the shooting, which requires that early training, the form, they're just much better at that. So, you know, there have been many examples of, uh, NBA players who were power forward centers themselves, and they have sons who are shooting guards. Uh, so they don't get quite as much of the height, uh, you know, as they had, but they get that early training to improve the shooting.

• 21:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very interesting. I feel like I missed, uh, my shot because I also read that Chris is the most common name for black NBA players. So if only I could have fixed the problem of not being black.

• 21:55Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, that was your first mistake.

• 21:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, uh, I guess, I guess I was not black before I was called Chris.

• 22:02Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, maybe.

• 22:04Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So, uh, Chris is the most common name among NBA players. Now, why is that? That seems just like a random piece of trivia. Uh, it gets to a bigger question of what's the socioeconomics of NBA players? And for a long time, conventional wisdom was that

• 22:22Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So that the NBA was disproportionately sampling from people from rough backgrounds, tough backgrounds, the ghetto, you know, impoverished, single parents. And the idea behind that was if you're, let's say, a black boy impoverished in the ghetto, and you're pretty good at basketball, that is your one chance of getting out, escaping your hardship, escaping your circumstance, you know, to become an NBA great. And you will do whatever it takes, work as hard as it, as is required to reach the top of basketball. Whereas if you're, you know, the son of a lawyer and a doctor in the suburbs, and yeah,

• 23:05Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  you're pretty good at basketball, well, you have so many options that you're not going to spend day and night, you know, practicing basketball, devoting yourself to this pursuit. That has never been true. There was initially a study by Josh Dubrow and Jimmy Adams that showed that both among Caucasians and African Americans, being from an upper-middle-class or above family is a huge advantage in reaching the NBA. And I've done my own study, NBA players much less likely than the population at large, and the black NBA players much less likely than black population at large to be born to a single mother, to be born to a teenage mother.

• 23:47Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  On any way you can look at the data, being from a, you know, two-parent home, upper-middle-class or middle-class or above, huge advantage to reaching the NBA. And the most maybe interesting data point for that is the names of NBA players. There was a paper by Roland Fryer and Steve Levitt that found that among the African-American population, you can tell the demographics of someone pretty well just based on their name, and that...

• 24:18Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  African Americans from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be given common names, names that are very popular in the population at large. African Americans from lower socioeconomics, from poverty, from the ghetto, more likely to be given rare, unique names, names that nobody else is given that year. So an example of that, I'm pretty sure, is LeBron. Now LeBron is probably a common name because, you know, everybody wants to name their kid after LeBron, but when LeBron was born, and he was born to a more difficult background, a single 16-year-old mother in Akron, Ohio, LeBron was a unique name. It wasn't given to other people that year. It wasn't given to, it wasn't a name that other people had as well.

• 25:02Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  And if you look at NBA players, they're half as likely, black NBA players are half as likely as the black population writ large to have unique names. They're much more likely to have names Chris, Michael, Marcus. So in the book, I have a whole word cloud of the names of NBA players, and the most common name by a pretty wide margin is Chris. You know, yeah. So you think of Chris Paul or Chris Bosh, many other examples. And Chris Paul's a great example of a player from two-parent home, middle-class, the family joined him on an episode of Family Feud. You know, that's kind of where the NBA is getting their players much more than conventional wisdom told us.

• 25:47Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So Michael Jordan, another example, grew up a middle-class, two-parent family in North, born in Brooklyn, raised in North Carolina, very stable upbringing. That's where the NBA is getting their talent by and large. Now, of course, not always, which means we have to give that much more credit to the LeBron James of the world, because they really did overcome a lot to...

• 26:13Chris Williamson?

  If only he'd been five foot three as well.

• 26:16Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Chris Williamson?

  With seven-inch hands.

• 26:18Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah. Then we'd really have to give him a lot of credit.

• 26:20Chris Williamson?

  Exactly. Just how dominated is the NBA by black players or African-American heritage?

• 26:28Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, it's about 80% of American born players are African American, which I didn't get into. You know, some of that, I don't go into the reasons for that, which is probably beyond the scope of my study. And you know, some of it is legitimately cultural. The black advantage, I didn't actually put this in the book, but the black advantage in basketball is smaller among Americans than it is, is larger among Americans than it is among Europeans or people from the Caribbean. Or so other regions of the world, there isn't such a big advantage for black people. And I think part of the reason is that basketball is just so popular

• 27:11Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  in the black community in the United States that, you know, if you, surveys that ask whether you're a huge basketball fan, African Americans are about twice as likely as other Americans to say they're huge basketball fans. So it is, you know, any, again, being a big fan of the sport is a huge advantage to reach in the top of the sport. That's why there are so many more players from the United States than there are from Great Britain, for example. You know, I don't think, you know, most people, you'd probably be more of an expert on this topic than I am, but I don't think most people growing up in London are dreaming of being a basketball player. They're dreaming of being, you know, they're not dreaming of being a Chicago Bull, they're dreaming to be an Arsenal player.

• 27:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  And I think, you know, and anytime, any community, whether it's a country or a race, or, you know, anything else, that where basketball is really popular is going to produce more than their fair share of NBA talent.

• 28:12Chris Williamson?

  What determines who chokes under pressure?

• 28:16Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, so this is, so one of the things very interesting is,

• 28:21Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  People choke in basketball, I think more than a lot of other sports. So you look at the average NBA player, you compare free throws, kind of how they shoot free throws normally. And free throws is a great test of choking because it's the exact same situation throughout the game. You're shooting from the same spot, no defenders, and the average NBA player shoots free throws more than one percentage point lower in clutch moments, five minutes or less on the clock, game within five points than in other times. So the average NBA player is a choker. It's kind of surprising because in a lot of sports, we found that players don't choke. And the reason for that is to reach the top of a sport, you have to be so mentally tough. You know,

• 29:05Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  the average person, of course, is going to choke under a pressure moment, but they're just going to be knocked out way before they reach the top of their sport, right? So you know, if you can't handle a pressure penalty kick, your problems are going to reveal themselves in high school, long before, you know, you're playing in the World Cup or, you know, or whatever. And similarly, you know, studies have shown that baseball players tend not to choke. So why do basketball players so consistently choke? And I think this gets to the point, again, I don't love hammering the seven footers, in large part because I feel like when a 5'9" person is attacking people taller than him, he seems like he has a horrible Napoleon complex.

• 29:46Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So, you know, I hesitate to use my book as just, you know, seven footers secretly all suck and tall people suck, because there's a dangerous pattern of shorter men doing things like this out of their own insecurity and resentments. But I can't lie, in the data, the only thing I could find that predicted choking was height, that taller players just choke more. And I think the reason for that is there's just not much selective pressure on taller NBA players. If you have to, only have to be, if one in seven seven footers reach the NBA, you only have to be, have one in seven basketball ability to reach the NBA, you don't have to be that great at everything. You don't have to be the world's most mentally tough person, because there just

• 30:31Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  aren't enough seven footers to choose from. And

• 30:36Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So the average six footer in the NBA shoots free throws exactly the same in the non-clutch moments and clutch moments, but the average seven footer shoots free throws more than six percentage points worse in clutch moments. So just an enormous tendency to choke among the tallest NBA players.

• 30:55Chris Williamson?

  Well, didn't you say that you wanted the NBA to have a height cutoff because you thought it would make the game more exciting?

• 31:01Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  That was another one where I'm like, God, if I say this, first of all, people are going to call me a heightist or something, but also.

• 31:07Chris Williamson?

  I don't know whether you can be a heightist around the people that have got it, that got like the advantage.

• 31:13Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, I just, I know, I made clear in the book that I don't think there actually should be a height advantage. I think if there were a height cutoff, if there were a height cutoff, I think it's odd and ambiguous that there would be more talent in the game, that the shooting would be better, the clutch shooting would be better, the athleticism would be better, all these factors would be better if there were a height cutoff. But no, I'm not a heightist or an anti-heightist or a reverse heightist.

• 31:42Chris Williamson?

  A tallest, whatever it is.

• 31:43Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Tallest, tallest, shortest. And, you know, I am a huge basketball fan and my favorite player growing up was Patrick Ewing, who was seven, you know, seven feet tall. So I do, they do enrich the game.

• 31:54Chris Williamson?

  Put your tall, supporting bona fides out front to center in case anyone's going to try and say something mean about you. Wasn't that, so it's at the very end of the, it's the very end of the book, but it seems related to this about childhood difficulty?

• 32:10Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Oh, yeah. So one of the things I was interested in was whether child difficulty predicts your tendency to choke. It's an interesting theory. I've heard a lot, you know, Jimmy Butler is a classic, great clutch shooter. He's completely unaffected by pressure moments, just so good in the clutch. And Jimmy Butler had such a rough childhood. His father abandoned the family, his mother kicked him out of the house because she didn't like the look of him. Like, it was just a horrible.

• 32:43Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Childhood and there is a theory that Jimmy Butler is so good in clutch moments because he's so tough because he's been through so much and compared his background to, you know, someone who grew up in the suburbs, you know, you know, a soccer mom and soccer, you know, an NBA dad or something. You know, they can't handle what Jimmy Butler can handle. So I actually tested this in the data in a fun way, in the book in a fun way. There isn't a measure, an objective measure of how difficult was your background? So one of the things we might get into about this book is I heavily relied on chat GPT to, in the creation of this book.

• 33:24Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  And I thought chat GPT would do a great job of giving me an objective measure of how difficult someone's childhood was. Cause it has in its data set, all this information about all the NBA players, what they went through in childhood. So I asked chat GPT to rank the background of NBA players and it gave such sensible answers. You know, Jimmy Butler was ranked a nine. Kawhi Leonard grew up in a tough neighborhood in Compton was ranked similarly a nine. Luol Deng ranked very high because he grew up in a civil war in Sudan. Like all these different measures, that would be hard to objectively, you know, rank. Chat GPT gives a very sensible ranking and then some players Dwight Howard, a state, his dad was a state trooper. He ranks very low.

• 34:10Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  The sons of NBA players rank very low. Steve Nash, suburban family in Canada ranks very low in difficulty of upbringing. So I had this great measure of difficulty of upbringing and then I tested, does this predict one's tendency to choke? And it doesn't, it does not. God damn it. At all. So it was a little bit of a letdown because it would have been a cool theory if you saw it in the data. The other thing is it made me realize. How dangerous it is to use chat GPT for research because if I really wanted to cheat, I could have just kept on asking chat GPT to give me a new ranking until I had a ranking that did predict choking. So there is a definite chat GPT, as amazing as it is as a code,

• 34:54Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  objective coder of information, does allow for a great deal of cherry picking if you're, if you don't feel like being too honest.

• 35:01Chris Williamson?

  Fuckery can occur.

• 35:02Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  It does, yeah.

• 35:02Chris Williamson?

  Warren Buffett and Paul Millsap, what did they have in common?

• 35:07Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah. So one of my chapters called, what do Warren Buffett and Paul Millsap have in common? Paul Millsap's a great NBA player, multi all multi time All-Star and Warren Buffett, as everyone knows, one of the greatest investors of all time. What they have in common, well, besides being great at their craft, was they both turned down the opportunity to go to an elite college, to go to a college that was less elite, but they felt more comfortable in. So Warren Buffett started his collegiate career at Wharton, you know, one of the great business schools in the world. And you'd think someone who dreamed of being a businessman

• 35:51Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  since he was the age of five would, you know, relish the opportunity to go to Wharton to learn from the greatest business professors, to have all the great business peers. And Buffett left Wharton and went to University of Nebraska because he wanted to be closer to his family. And he thought the libraries were just as good anyway. And Paul Millsap was a top ranked recruit, got offers from Arizona, Louisville, LSU, but he decides to go to Louisiana Tech because he felt comfortable there, was close to his family. And the chapter. Basically, looks at the data on whether it matters whether you go to a good college.

• 36:35Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So what so it doesn't matter both for you for for a career, the great the great colleges that, you know, tend to that people go there are some colleges in which people go to to them have way higher earnings. So Harvard, Stanford, Warden, you know, is it a big advantage? Does it cause you to do better to go to one of these schools? And then in basketball, there are certain universities, there are different universities, but North Carolina, Kentucky, Duke, UCLA, where players who go there are way more likely to become NBA players. So is it really important to go to one of these colleges? And I think the evidence is my read of the evidence on both the real world and the NBA

• 37:21Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  is that going to one of these elite colleges gives you an early edge. So if you go to Harvard undergrad, Stanford undergrad, Ivy League, another Ivy League undergrad, you're more likely to get into an elite graduate school, more likely to get that first job at McKinsey or a prestigious firm, a Google. And in basketball, if you go to Duke, if you go to North Carolina, if you go to Kentucky, you're more likely to be drafted. But if you look at the long term outcome, how good you are as an NBA player, eventually, how much you earn over your career, they don't seem to do that much. Eventually, things kind of even out. And if you, you know, so they kind of trick people early on, they give a shine to you.

• 38:04Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  If you have that gold plated resume that you went to this elite school, you know, you can trick the world early in your career, but eventually, everything's going to even out. And that kind of happened to both Buffett and Millsap, where Warren Buffett got rejected from Harvard Business School, because probably because they're looking at this guy from Nebraska and like, you know, well, we don't want someone from Nebraska, we can get someone from Warden or one of these other elite schools. But I think it's pretty clear in the long run, he wasn't hurt by his Nebraska education. You know, became one of the wealthiest men in human history. And similarly, Paul Millsap fell. To the second rounds, perhaps because teams are like, well, we don't trust a guy from Louisiana Tech.

• 38:45Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  But in the long run, he became, you know, a great NBA player, an all-star NBA player. So it's interesting that the real world and the NBA seem to colleges seem to serve a similar function. They give you that early shine, but then they don't seem to do much beyond that.

• 39:00Chris Williamson?

  How important is going to college at all?

• 39:05Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Well, one of the things that's very interesting in the data is historically NBA players who didn't go to college, you know, who went straight out of high school massively overperformed their draft spot. You know, it was a great bet. Now you have to go to college for a year, so you can't take advantage of this inefficiency anymore. But for many years, it was an extraordinary idea to draft a player straight out of high school. So Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Rashard Lewis, you know, numerous players. Amari Stoudemire just massively outperformed their draft spot.

• 39:46Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I think one of the reasons for this, my hypothesis, you know, there are many hypotheses for these, but my hypothesis is if you skipped college and went straight to the draft, it was such a bold move. It was saying something about yourself and you do yourself so well and your capabilities that you do something about yourself that the rest of the world missed that is a huge advantage in being a basketball player. And I think I compare that to the great entrepreneurs. You know, if you look at the very greatest entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, what do many of them have in common? They dropped out of school very quickly. And I think if you looked at

• 40:30Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  These great entrepreneurs on paper, if you looked at Zuckerberg and Gates, you know, you'd say, okay, they went to a good school. They maybe had high test scores. They were interested in computers, but so are lots of people. But the fact that they dropped out of school to follow their entrepreneurial spirit, I think was another clue that they had something else about themselves that was so remarkable that the another person who had a similar background but wanted to stay in school didn't have. And I think the same in NBA, among NBA players that Kobe Bryant knew something about himself, Amir Johnson, Rashard Lewis, they all knew something about himself, themselves in making that decision to go straight to the NBA that the rest of the world didn't know. And they, they're just, there was just extraordinary inefficiency

• 41:14Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  where high, straight out of high school players massively have overperformed their draft spot.

• 41:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's so interesting, the, I guess, kind of selection effect of what's going on here, like how much of this is just, there's a smaller pool that we're moving from, or somebody has a particular outlier, which is, is, it's a commonality between all of these different people, right? There's a common thread that goes between them all. And yeah, just ridiculous self-belief, I suppose, probably correlates with the turn of others. Honestly, self-belief might correlate with VO2 max. Like you, I would totally be open to hearing that, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, zone two threshold and lactate management ability are strongly correlated with self-belief, like.

• 42:02Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I, I totally believe it. I think one of the frustrating things is of writing a book about NBA basketball. When you're an NBA basketball fan, as I am, an enormous NBA basketball fan, as I am, is it's almost impossible for the book to be finished. Cause you know, there are a hundred more questions I want to look at, based on these, these findings like that, that would be fascinating to look at, you know, I don't know if there's a way to measure it. But I'd, I'd love to see, you know, to, to look at that and to really understand why hand size has been undervalued and, you know, why high school players have overperformed and all these questions. They're just like, you answer one question, and if you're a fan of the game, you have 10 more questions you want to answer based on that question.

• 42:44Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So I had to remind myself many times in the process of writing this book that.

• 42:51Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Perfect is the enemy of the of the good and that I had to finish the project at some point.

• 42:56Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned there about the NBA draft and coming from a anglicized colonial British imperialist background, the idea of a draft for us, we don't have it in rugby, we don't have it in cricket, we don't have it in football. And yet it's so common in American sports, you know.

• 43:19Chris Williamson?

  What, how effective is it? Is it, is it good? Is it a good idea for basketball at least?

• 43:25Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I mean, I think it evens the playing field for sure. You know, there, there are some sports where the best teams are just the richest teams. You know, the, you know, the whatever team can spend the most money on the best players is going to be the best team, is going to be the best team. And that's not really true in basketball. You know, San Antonio was a great team for many decades. Even though they're in one of the smallest markets and I'm a huge Knicks fan, we're in the biggest market, you know, we should be able to spend the most on players. We have the biggest TV deal and, and we can't, we've been, we're finally good again this year, but we were terrible for so long.

• 44:07Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  And I think the draft does, you know, serve as, as, as an equalizer where, you know, if you do get that number one pick and you are able to, you know, draft a Tim Duncan,

• 44:22Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  or, you know, you are gonna potentially have a great team for 10, 15 years. So it definitely does serve the purpose of equalizing things, I would say. And it also is fun to try to, you know, predict who's going to be a good player. You know, the NBA is one of the best leagues at predicting who's going to be a great player. You know, if you look at the top 10 NBA players of all time, 60% of them, I think were number one picks.

• 44:54Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Uh, the number one overall.

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  So it's very, it's very predictive then.

• 44:57Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  It's, it's, it's very predictive. It's not true in baseball. It's not true in football. The numbers are much lower in those sports. Now, of course, there are outliers. So, uh, Nikola Jokic on Denver was a second round pick and he's, you know, one of the best, if not the best NBA player. Uh, so there are exceptions, but, uh, you know, and there are these inefficiencies as I discussed about in the book, you know, hand size isn't properly taken into account and, uh, you know, I, another one I talked about is standing leap versus vertical leap, uh, which is very interesting.

• 45:31Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  If you look at, when NBA players are, uh, participate in the combine where they're measured on all these traits, how tall they are, their wingspan, their hand width. Uh, they have, they have to, that, uh, the teams want to see how high they can jump and they give them two tests. Uh, the first one is a, a standing leap. You stand in place and just, you know, without any head start, see how high you can jump. And then the second one is a vertical leap. You get a running head start. It's not a full on, you know, the whole court running head start, but you get some head start and then see how high you can jump. And of course with a running head start, everybody can jump higher.

• 46:09Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  And one thing that's very interesting is if you see what predicts block shots or rebounds among basketball players. It's not the vertical leap, the running head start leap. It's the standing leap. Because a lot of basketball, you don't get a running head start.

• 46:25Chris Williamson?

  Around the net.

• 46:26Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Out a player. Yeah. You're boxing out a player and the ball just comes and you jump or a guy's going through the lane and you just maybe get half a step and, and leap. So if you actually look at the draft, there's an inefficiency where players who have a great standing leap relative to their vertical leap are undervalued. And the players who have a great vertical leap relative to their standing leap are overvalued. And I think the reason for that is it's such a sexy shiny trait, that running head start leap. If you can, you know, the people there, if you can run the length of the court and, you know, leap from the free throw line and dunk the ball. Like that is so, such an impressive athletic feat that I think people are blinded, are just like, oh my God, this person has to be amazing at basketball.

• 47:08Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  It's much sexier than someone who can leap not as high, but higher relative to what you'd expect without a running head starts. That's an inefficiency, uh, in the draft, but.

• 47:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there, there needs to be a, uh, like. Coolness modifier for the exercises.

• 47:26Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, I, you know, again, once you write a book like this, just your mind's and you're a sports fan. I'm just a fan of all sports. My mind just starts racing. Yeah, does this play out in other sports? I, you know, are cool traits, uh, you know, overvalued in both, in both sports. But I guess.

• 47:41Chris Williamson?

  Well, I bet, I, I absolutely bet that, um, pitch speed, like average pitch speed in baseball is something that is very, very highly prioritized. You know, if you're regularly able to hit three figures throughout multiple innings, uh, it's just the whole crowd when they see that one zero zero dot zero zero like, oh, like the whole crowd makes noise, right? So it's like,

• 48:10Chris Williamson?

  but is that, is that the best? I mean, this.

• 48:13Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, I, I believe it and yeah, I, I believe it. And, you know, in, in football, our, our football, American football, uh, you know, the, the speed of a player relative of, let's say a wide receiver relative to running good routes. You know, a, a player is just has an incredible 40 yard dash, you know, four, two, five, four, three, you know, it's so impressive, so exciting. Uh, I think they tend to be drafted maybe higher than they should be relative to someone who runs a four, four, five, a four, five. But, you know, really precise on those routes, like it's just not that exciting. But it is more important, you know, I, yeah, you could probably go through lots of sports where the sexy traits are overvalued.

• 48:58Chris Williamson?

  There's a really cool YouTube video by Total Running Productions about Su Bing Chan. So he is the 14th fastest sprinter in the world, but he's the only, he might be the only non-black sprinter in the top.

• 49:14Chris Williamson?

  The top quite a lot, but he's the only Asian sprinter in the top 200 or something. And the guy's 5'8", I think, 5'8" or 5'9". And when he ran at the Tokyo 21 semifinals, his 100 meter time, which I think came in at like 9.8, 9.81 or something. But he broke the world record for the 40 meter and the 60 meter in the 100 meter. So this guy is like, and it's the video that I'm talking about, you, I'll send it to you once we're done. It's so good, dude. And you see this, this dude who can't get below 10 seconds, he can't get below 10 seconds.

• 49:57Chris Williamson?

  He's just, is this the theoretical limit for Asian sprinters? And he changes his starting foot and rebuilds his running rhythm from the ground up. You know, when he's been doing it for two decades or something. And it's just, it's awesome. He's like my favorite, he's one of my favorite track and field guys now. It's this short Chinese dude who's just the most, the acceleration of him is so insane. It's crazy.

• 50:25Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I think, I think one of the things you see in all sports are these players that just are so good at making themselves better throughout their career. And, you know, you talk about wide receivers, Jerry Rice, the greatest wide receiver of all time.

• 50:44Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  He didn't have the greatest natural gifts, you know, he wasn't the fastest, he's not the tallest. But he just would improve every year and just so, such dedication to his craft. You know, tiny improvement, such a focus on, you know, the routes he was running. And, you know, if you think of basketball, Kawhi Leonard, I think fits that profile as well. Maybe not the most naturally gifted player, but just year after year improving, paying attention to every subtle little thing, you know, the how to rebound better, play the angles off the, off the rim better. And I think it is fun to watch these players, even in many ways more fun

• 51:28Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  than watching the naturally gifted, you know, the most naturally gifted players who maybe don't have to put in quite the effort and they're, they can frustrate you. You know, Shaquille O'Neal.

• 51:41Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  He was interviewed and they said Phil Jackson, your coach, said that if you just practiced hard, you could have been MVP 10 years straight. And you'd think Shaquille O'Neal would be outraged at this statement, you know, how could someone say that? And he basically admitted that this was true. He's like, yeah, I didn't love practicing, you know, I liked my cheeseburgers in the offseason. But he was just so gifted. You combine that height with that, you know, that foot speed and that athleticism, it just didn't matter. But, you know, Shaq is a little frustrating, you know? If I were a Lakers fan, I'd be so frustrated, like, why can't you just learn how to shoot free throws for God's sake?

• 52:25Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Like, whereas, you know, some of these players, the real craftsmen who just constantly are improving and upping their game year after year, working at it, can be really, really fun to watch.

• 52:36Chris Williamson?

  What have you come to believe or what are the insights about the role of hard work in achieving goals?

• 52:45Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I think it depends so much on the pursuit.

• 52:50Chris Williamson?

  Everything that isn't basketball or volleyball?

• 52:54Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, if you're 5'9" and you have small hands and you're slow and you can't jump, like, there's nothing, you got no chance. You know, you can work as hard as you want, it's not going to help. I would say basketball, because it's so dependent on so many traits that are so genetic, such as height, I think hard work, it moves the needle a little bit. And I think, you know, there, you know, Michael, there's a difference between, you know, Michael Jordan is considered the greatest of all time and Shaq isn't, probably in large part because Michael Jordan outworked Shaq. And, you know, if Shaq had outworked Michael, I think Shaq would be the player that, you

• 53:37Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  know, is number one on everyone's mind as the quintessential basketball player.

• 53:43Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  But so I think hard work can take you, you know, from Shaq to MJ. But it's not going to take you from Seth to Shaq. Or, you know, it's, it's, there's, there's, you're moving the needle a little bit, but not that much in basketball. But there's other pursuits where hard work maybe matters more than, and I always suggest if you're not genetically gifted. You know, there are some sports, equestrian riding or skiing, or, you know, there are certain sports where I think you really can improve your craft. You know, you, you, you can move the needle a lot more through hard work than you can in a sport like basketball or sprinting or something.

• 54:23Chris Williamson?

  All right. So we've kind of flooded around it and some of the people who don't know or didn't listen to our previous episodes. And realize that you're an ex data scientist from Google and then you've written all of these phenomenal books, which I love.

• 54:36Chris Williamson?

  Why you know so much about basketball? Like, why, who are you to write this book? And how do you happen to have this like encyclopedic?

• 54:50Chris Williamson?

  X-ray vision to be able to see what's going on inside of the world of basketball?

• 54:55Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  So, well, first of all, I'm an enormous basketball fan. I have been since I was a little boy. You know, I don't think I could have written a book of, you know, a book like this of who becomes the best figure skater in the world? Or who becomes the best opera singer? Cause I definitely was relying pretty heavily on knowledge. I have from three decades as a, of passionate fandom of basketball. But this book, I used a new tool that I have become obsessed with. It was initially called code interpreter. It's now called data analysis. It's from chat GPT.

• 55:38Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  And it's basically a way to do data analysis that has just completely revolutionized my work stream. Like it's, I say it's the most amazing product I've ever seen. I always need to offer the caveat. I have zero affiliation with chat with OpenAI. I feel like when I say this, I sound like I'm a spokesman for their, you know, pitchman for their product. I, I, I'm not associated with OpenAI at all. But it basically, data analysis, what was originally called code interpreter, it writes all your data analysis, your data science code for you and runs it. And it is just such a game changer that things that used to take me four months now literally

• 56:19Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  take me four hours or sometimes less. It's just so wild. Scraping data sets, cleaning data sets, merging data sets, running regressions, making charts. It is the most insane product I've ever seen. And so this book was just like written in like an explosion of just data analysis in like a shockingly short time of just all day running code interpreter analyses of basketball. And I was having the time of my life and just like, just so quickly producing these charts, producing these analyses. You know, I think this book would have been a project of many,

• 57:00Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  many years without code interpreter. And with code interpreter was a project that took basically 30 days, which I initially I was really proud of, but now people are like, well, do I want to read a book that only took you 30 days? Like,

• 57:16Chris Williamson?

  There's a really, there's a really famous lecture, I guess, this guy, it's a clip from a, what looks like a marketing class or a sales class perhaps or something. And he says, how much would you pay me if you wanted me to design your new logo? And the guy says, I'd pay you $1,000. He goes, okay. And how much would you pay me if I was able to design it in 30 minutes? He said, well, I'd pay you, you know, like $500. He's like, hang in a second. So you're getting the service more quickly. But you're, you want to pay less because you think that the amount of time is indicative of the amount of effort, which is indicative of the amount of quality.

• 57:55Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, it was interesting. So initially, the first version of Who Makes the NBA? I, one of the marketing hooks, I'm like, look, I wrote this book in 30 days and I also show at the end, I, um, this is how I did it. This is how I used, uh, chat GPT to do all the analysis, not to do the writing, the writing I did all myself, but to do the analysis. Oh, to make the art, all the art is AI generated from mid journey or Dolly. You know, here's what I learned along the way in, in writing this book. And a few people were like, exactly like this guy said, like, well, we, I don't want to read a book in your 30 day vanity project. So now I've toned that down and I've said more that, you know, I, I also show you how to use AI.

• 58:34Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I, I'm, I'm de-emphasizing the actual time, uh, that I use, but I think that's just unfair to just how revolutionary chat GPT is. That prior to the existence of code interpreter, if I said, uh, I wrote a book on NBA basketball in 30 days. I think people would correctly say this is a piece of crap and a Seth vanity project and I don't want anything to do with this. But I think because of code interpreter, because of mid journey, because of Dolly, because of chat GPT. You can write a book in 30 days that is a real treatise on basketball with new insights on the game. You know, many answers to previously unanswered questions.

• 59:14Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Uh, I think people don't realize just how revolutionary AI is for the creative process, that the rules of how long something should take. Uh, you know, over the last year have completely changed.

• 59:30Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. It's very interesting. It's very interesting to think that you've got this like arbitrary link between time spent and, and quality. It would be like if you said, um, here's some butter, but I churned it myself, like with my feet or something. Oh, I very much appreciate the fact that you went through all of that effort to give me this butter. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then that, that book that you see that's in front of you, it was actually written by hand. Uh, but it's, it's a handwritten book and then the, all of the pages are kind of stitched and sewn together. But, you know, like technological progress, people are very typically, there's a lot of inertia to people being dragged along.

• 1:00:12Chris Williamson?

  And, uh, yeah, interesting man, very, very interesting. I suppose what we're seeing here is just like leverage at such an insane.

• 1:00:21Chris Williamson?

  Level of magnitude that your ability to manipulate chat GPT and data analyzer and to be able to spit out what you needed and then to be able to put it together and then to be able to use chat GPT to be able to proofread the words so that there wasn't any errors in it. Like that is.

• 1:00:41Chris Williamson?

  It's taking a skill set, but leveraging it so much, way more than even something like Wikipedia or a word processor could do. So yeah, people are just not, not ready for this level of exponential. Dude, I appreciate you. I think you've smashed it with the book. I'm really impressed. You say at the beginning, you make a joke that you're going to try and write a hundred bucks. If that is a joke, right? You're not going to try and do a hundred bucks.

• 1:01:03Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  I don't know. I might. I, I'll see. I'm trying to work on the monetization of this book. Like I'm trying to figure out.

• 1:01:10Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Like, uh. Yeah, exactly how to, if I get the monetization right, because I also self-published this book. It was like all the publishers are just like, we don't know what to do with your weird 30 day projects. Like that's not, publishers move very, very slowly. So no publisher would really touch this. So I'm kind of trying to figure out the, if I got the monetization right, I would, I would just keep doing it. Cause the other thing is this was the best month of my life, bar none. It was so fun. In part because I was writing about, uh, you know, the NBA. I'm a huge basketball fan. Of course that's going to be fun for someone like me.

• 1:01:50Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  But in part because one thing I found is AI just does so many of the things I freaking hate doing. So, you know, I'm a data scientist, data analyst, like. A lot of data science, data analysis is not particularly fun. Uh, you know.

• 1:02:09Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  For me, writing code, debugging code, uh, you know, looking up code, uh, you know, figuring out exactly how to add something to a chart in this way. It's just, you know, mind numbing a lot of it. And in this project, that was all gone. Like, all I did was come up with ideas and I'm just like, here, data analyst, do it for me. And it was just awesome. It was so fun. So it's just like, it was the most fun month I've had in my life. So, you know, if I can get the monetization right on the book, on the, on this, then I'm just, yeah, I'm going.

• 1:02:44Chris Williamson?

  Bring those together and you've got a decade of the most fun months of your life, back to back to back.

• 1:02:50Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Yeah, no, I said I'd have a baseball book out by opening day, then I'd have an Olympics book for the, you know, by the summer. Then I have an NFL book for, uh, for the start of that season. I just keep on going. It would just be the most fun, yeah, the most fun months of my life. So.

• 1:03:05Chris Williamson?

  Hell yeah. Seth, I appreciate you. Uh, I look forward to seeing what you do next. I'll bring you back on. Let's have this, uh, let's have this chat one more time.

• 1:03:12Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Chris, thanks so much, Rob, man. Congrats on the success of this podcast. It's been, uh, you, I remember when you first reached out to me to talk about my first book, Everybody Lies. And I, I think I looked you up and you were like a two-bit podcaster. Uh, I'm like, but I'm like, yeah, it seems like a nice guy. I'll do this, this little podcast. And to see you, uh, go into the stratosphere, uh, has been a true joy and very well deserved because you have worked really hard for it.

• 1:03:38Chris Williamson?

  Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. I really, really do. Until next time, mate. I'll catch you later on.

• 1:03:43Seth Stephens-Davidowitz?

  Thanks. See you, Chris.