The Smartening

Sports has gotten smarter. Many other industries will follow.

Michael Jordan won six NBA championships, and he did that taking (what modern analysts would consider) dumb shots.

Compare Jordan’s shot chart with LeBron James’:

Image from Statmuse. I believe they only include shots from Jordan’s final few seasons.

Jordan — in my opinion the greatest basketball player ever — took almost exclusively two-point jump shots, and many from were just inside the three-point line. Virtually no NBA player takes long two-point shots, because they are seen as low expected value: they convert at a lower percentage than close-in two point shots, and are only worth 2/3 as many points as three-point shots from only slightly further out.

LeBron James most often shoots from closer to the basket than Jordan did. However when he takes jump shots, they’re predominantly from outside the three-point line. James has taken nearly three times as many three point shots per game as Jordan did.

Michael Jordan didn’t take many three point shots because people didn’t realize how much more effective it was to take three point shots. When Jordan won his first title in 1990-91, there were an average of 7.1 three point attempts per game in the NBA. Last season there were 35.1 attempts per game, nearly a 5x increase over 33 years.

NBA teams have come to see that shooting more three point shots is smart. That has totally changed the game:

• Teams want to take far more three pointers.

• To do that, they prioritize finding good three-point shooters

• Individual players spend far more time working on their three point shooting. As a result shoot much better than they did in Michael Jordan’s era.

• Teams’ defense is predicated on trying to stop three point shots (or even allow fewer attempts).

Had LeBron James come into the NBA in 1984 (when Jordan was drafted), he probably would have only attempted a handful of three point shots in his career. Had Jordan come into the NBA in 2003 (when James was drafted), he likely would have become a great three point shooter.

Thanks to better data and better analytics, the NBA has gotten smarter about strategy, and it’s changed everything.

Electoral Politics Will Be Smartened

Electoral politics today is a bit like the NBA in 1991. Candidates and political organizations are mostly just winging it. And voters make decisions with very little information.

Candidates — even at the highest levels — mostly communicate much less effectively than they ought to. They aren’t disciplined, they aren’t targeting the right voters, they aren’t using their money effectively. There are some exceptions, but there aren’t a lot.

Voters are mostly winging it too. They don’t do much research and they vote almost entirely on whether the candidate has a D next to her name or an R. In primaries, voters make decisions with very little information. Primaries provide a massive advantage to the incumbent, even when the incumbent has low name recognition, because 40% name recognition is much better than 10% name recognition. In most cases — and especially in down-ballot races — voters know little about the character, the views, or the competence of the candidates who are running.

This will change.

NBA teams have realized that they should take a lot more three pointers than they used to. NFL teams have realized that there are a lot of situations where it makes sense to go for it on fourth down. Baseball teams have realized that walks are really valuable.

The cost of gathering and analyzing data is going down quickly. In the next decade or two, political campaigns will get much better data on what works and what doesn’t, and they’ll increasingly use that data to make smarter decisions. And voters will get much better data on who will serve them well and who won’t, and they’ll increasingly use that data to make smarter decisions.

It’s challenging to map out how different approaches by both candidates and voters will affect politics and (more importantly) public policy. But the fact that voters will have more and better information on how their votes will actually affect their lives is likely to improve the caliber of elected officials.

The Smartening Everywhere

This ability to make smarter decisions will show up in many places.

Airbnb and Uber are largely facilitated by this sort of two-way data and transparency, even if they aren’t using any fancy analytics. Yelp has similar dynamics, though their review data generally goes in only one direction. People choosing where to stay or where to eat are making much better, smarter decisions than they did twenty years ago, because they have much better data.

Sales is relatively early on the path towards The Smartening. In sales of all types, sellers will be increasingly able to effectively target and pitch many potential customers. At the same time, buyers will be increasingly able to effectively judge many potential providers and products.

For individuals who want to improve themselves, The Smartening is an incredible opportunity. We will increasingly learn what techniques work to make us happier, healthier, stronger, more knowledgable versions of ourselves. In basketball, this is a zero sum game — when LeBron James gets stronger or faster or savvier, it helps him but his opponents suffer — but in many aspects of life we can all improve.

There are many areas where regulatory or other constraints may slow The Smartening. Employers receive a very small slice of the information that could help them understand a potential employee’s skills, strengths, and work styles; employees (and ex-employees) rarely share the harshest comments on a workplace because of concerns they might burn bridges.

This is one of the things that makes me most excited about AI. The kind of research that has transformed the NBA over the past forty years will increasingly be available, and it will lead to better, smarter decisions. There will no doubt be some challenges — even in the NBA, some players would be better off if there weren’t so many three-point shots — but The Smartening is cause for optimism.