Behind the Bench

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that the Celtics blew away the Lakers in Game 6 of the NBA finals to win their 17th championship – and first in 22 years.

Celtics Championship

A lot has been made about the structure of the team and how management built a team around the three stars of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.  What’s equally interesting is what goes on away from the parquet.  The team is owned by a syndicate of 25 financiers, mostly venture capitalists and private equity veterans.

What does this mean?  Well, they’re fiercely competitive but also metrics driven.  Maybe that’s why they crunch the numbers on every datapoint they can get about their competition and essentially model how the team should react to different teams and players.

You’re never going to win in sport without great players – but great players alone aren’t going to beat a team that hustles this hard off the court.