The Quest to Measure Basketball IQ

Counterpoints: The Sports Analytics Podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review

Basketball IQ is one of the game’s holy analytical grails. We know it’s there, or at least we think we know it’s there. But what is it even made of? Intuition? Vision? Knowledge of the game? Or is it simply natural intelligence and brain processing speed applied to a specific context? Former director of sports analytics at ESPN Ben Alamar is one of sports’ leading proponents for and experts in basketball IQ. In this episode, Ben joins the show to defend the hypothesis: NBA teams would make fewer draft mistakes if they measured basketball IQ.