Ryan Resch, former Assistant General Manager and VP of Basketball Operations for the Phoenix Suns, joins guest host Jimmy Soni on Infinite Loops to explore what happens to competitive advantage when every team has the same data, and why the real edge comes from the questions you ask of it. Ryan traces his path from a cold email to Baylor coach Scott Drew to nearly a decade in the Suns front office and his current work leading data and AI in private equity.
We’ve shared some highlights below, together with links & a full transcript. If you like what you hear/read, please leave a comment or drop us a review on your provider of choice.
Links
Show Notes
Ryan Resch & Jimmy Soni
Ryan Resch on LinkedIn: Former Suns Assistant GM and VP of Basketball Operations, now leading data and AI at 1949 Capital Partners. Connect with Ryan
Beyond the Dashboard: Ryan’s Harvard Business School interview with Boris Groysberg on optical tracking, dashboards, and AI. Read the interview
Shore Capital Partners: The private equity firm founded by Justin Ishbia, where Ryan helped roll out AI tools. Shore Capital Partners
Jimmy Soni on X: Guest host, bestselling author, and editor-in-chief of Infinite Books. Connect with Jimmy
Teams, Leaders & Data Discussed
James Jones: The 2020-21 NBA Executive of the Year, whose Suns rebuild started with raising the floor. Executive of the Year
Scott Drew: The Baylor head coach who answered Ryan’s cold email and later had him build lineup data. Scott Drew at Baylor
SportVU: The camera system that brought optical tracking to every NBA arena in 2013-14. SportVU and the NBA
Second Spectrum: The machine learning platform that turned tracking data into tagged plays and dashboards teams across the league use. Second Spectrum and the NBA
Hawk-Eye: Sony’s 3D tracking system, used across the NBA since 2023-24. Hawk-Eye and the NBA
Books, Shows & AI Tools Mentioned
Moneyball by Michael Lewis: The 2003 book on the Oakland A’s that frames how analytics moved from baseball into basketball. Moneyball
Hyperion by Dan Simmons: The first book in the sci-fi series Ryan is reading, and a window into how earlier writers imagined AI. Hyperion
The Founders by Jimmy Soni: Jimmy’s history of PayPal and Silicon Valley, which Ryan handed out at the Suns. The Founders
TBPN and Dwarkesh Podcast: Two of the tech shows Ryan wishes he had more hours for. TBPN | Dwarkesh Podcast
Claude Code and Codex: The coding agents Ryan uses in a workspace built for agents to read. Claude Code | Codex
Highlights
When Does Peanut Butter Become a Meal?
Ryan Resch
I got in trouble by the NCAA for buying honey roasted peanut butter.Jimmy Soni
What?Ryan Resch
Because I had no idea. So the NCAA was extremely strict pre NIL. And the meals, what classified as a meal, was extremely strict as well. And so we could not provide food under certain conditions to guys because then it would be considered a meal. If they get a meal, it’s an impermissible benefit.Jimmy Soni
Wow.Ryan Resch
Oh, it was a whole bureaucracy. I mean, it still is a bureaucracy.Jimmy Soni
Right.Ryan Resch
But on a different level. And so, look, according to Baylor compliance, adding honey to peanut butter made it a meal at that time.Jimmy Soni
Adding honey to peanut butter that a player was going to eat...Ryan Resch
Yes.Jimmy Soni
Made what you did impermissible.Ryan Resch
Yes.Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.Ryan Resch
It’s absurd. Absolutely crazy.Jimmy Soni
That is bananas.Ryan Resch
It is. And you talk about, you know, you go back to your previous question about data and logic entering sport, the human component. The bureaucracy of it all is what removes the human component. Whereas the player needs this. Not like, let’s put aside the fact that people just love peanut butter. Like, it’s amazing and I can’t have it in the house. Players need this to recover. They need the sugar, they need the protein, they need the fat. Right? So you are instead focused on this arbitrary definition of impermissible benefit instead of what’s best for the players.Jimmy Soni
Right. That’s right.Ryan Resch
Yeah. I think that’s what’s actually removing it.
The Coaches Take the Blame
Jimmy Soni
Oh, okay. You know, during your tenure, they were really starting their climb. So what did you see in that culture? Like, what was it that made Baylor stand out from other comparable programs?Ryan Resch
I will say one of the things that I understand now that I did not understand then was the coaches always shouldering the blame for the players. Always. And behind closed doors, you know, publicly as well, that one’s more obvious. Like, a lot of coaches do that. But even behind closed doors, a lot of the conversations would center around, okay, if this player is turning the ball over, how do we teach them not to do that? How do we put them in a position not to do that? And I think that’s notable because obviously sport is extremely emotional.Jimmy Soni
Right.Ryan Resch
It is very volatile. You’re going to lose three games in a row at some point.Jimmy Soni
Yeah.Ryan Resch
And you have to really have this stability in order to ride that. And the easy thing to do there is to get all pissed off and start blaming the players. Say that you need better players, you need more talent, whatever. And maybe that is objectively true. If you are going up against a Duke that has the top five guys in the class, like, whatever, like, you still need to figure out how to beat them. But to see a coaching staff led by Scott Drew, Jerome Tang, a lot of the folks that are still there, shoulder that blame. And then they would always tell them, they would tell me, they would be like, “It’s our fault.”Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.Ryan Resch
And I would say, “I don’t understand this. We’re not the ones turning the ball over.” Because I was so, like, petulant. And then I get it now, like, having gone through everything that I went through at the Suns and everything that’s come after. Like, I understand now that when you ask about the culture of that space, you need to create a teaching culture, like an actual learning culture, where somebody can make a mistake, like turning the ball over or missing a shot, and then know that it’s not going to result in punishment, it’s going to result in a lesson. Maybe that lesson is hard, right? It’s tough love. But there is going to be a lesson involved in it.
Edited Transcript
Jimmy Soni
Welcome to Infinite Loops. My name is Jimmy Soni. I am the editor in chief of Infinite Books and I am guest hosting for Jim O’Shaughnessy. My guest today is Ryan Resch. Ryan spent nearly a decade with the Phoenix Suns, where he started as an intern and left as the assistant general manager and VP of basketball operations, running everything from roster strategy and data science to scouting and health and performance and everything in between. Ryan Resch, welcome to Infinite Loops.
Ryan Resch
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jimmy Soni
Of course. So, just so listeners have a bit of context and background, you and I have been friends for a number of years, but when I met you, you were the vice president of basketball operations for the Phoenix Suns, the assistant general manager, and you reported directly to the head of the Phoenix Suns. And you kind of gave me and a number of other people we were with a behind the scenes view of the Suns organization and how it operates. But just so people listening have context: first of all, you were in an NBA front office at, like, a ridiculously young age. You were chief of staff to the head of the organization when the Suns went to the Finals and when they won 64 games.
Ryan Resch
Franchise record.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. And then you become this kind of, you’re like one of the go to people on sports and data and where they intersect, and now sports data and AI and where they intersect. And right now you are at 1949 Capital Partners and you’re leading the firm’s work on data and AI. So the thing that interests me most, I mean, among other things, is, you know, you’re not six foot four, right? So walk us through kind of like your early life. You were a military brat. But I want to go from, to, before you get to the NBA, let’s figure out how you got to the NBA. So you started out in life and you’re a military brat, you’re moving around a lot. So walk us through: where’d you grow up? How’d you live?
Ryan Resch
Son of two Air Force parents. We lived in seven places before the age of 18 years old.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
Which I always kind of surprise myself when I say that. So, born in New Jersey, lived on effectively every coast. Went to high school in Germany. So I went overseas for high school. It was a military base, on Ramstein Air Base. So still kind of an American experience there, but we did live in a German village. And so it was, you know, a bit of an international time. Came back and moved to Texas to go to Baylor University, where I had family in Texas, in Florida, from my parents’ sides. And Baylor was the first school to accept me. And I’m not the most patient person. And so the fact that they did accept me so quickly did help while I was waiting on other schools. Did enough research into Baylor, their political science program, which was my first, I would say, passion and first love growing up, was political science. Probably from being around the Air Force and the military and learning that side of it. And enrolled in the... would that have been the fall of 2010?
Jimmy Soni
Got it.
Ryan Resch
And I was a campus tour guide my sophomore year. I’m still very good at walking backward and talking. And I had this weird desire to go into sports journalism, which I don’t...
Jimmy Soni
Were you a sports fan growing up?
Ryan Resch
I was a huge NFL fan and I was a big basketball fan.
Jimmy Soni
Okay.
Ryan Resch
But it’s hard when you’re a military kid because you don’t really have a home. So whenever I’m asked, “Oh, where are you from?” I have to give this whole long explanation around it. And when you don’t have, like, a hometown, it’s hard to really pinpoint what you’re a fan of. And I got into basketball when we lived in Florida. So I became a Miami Heat fan at the time, right around when Dwyane Wade was drafted, which was then ironic, that my future boss, James Jones, was on those Miami Heat championship teams. And my dad was a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan growing up. So I grew up as a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan and I loved watching sport. I loved the competition of it, the game of it. And I had no, as you mentioned, I’m not six four. And so I had no... I’m deeply... I have no coordination, no hand...
Jimmy Soni
To be clear, Muggsy Bogues, like, broke the mold, right? Like, when I was growing up, because I was short and I loved basketball, so in the brief period in which I held these, you know, dashed dreams of becoming a basketball player, I would just turn to Muggsy Bogues. Like, Muggsy made it work.
Ryan Resch
There you go. That’s all you need. You just need determination and grit and hope that your jump shot... And I, for a very short period, decided to double major in journalism, which I quit. And then decided one day, it’s like, I am just going to cold email Scott Drew, who is the head coach of Baylor men’s basketball still to this day. And testament to him that he responded right away. So right after my summer, after my sophomore year, I sent a cold email to Scott, said, “I respect your program. I admire what you’re building. If there’s ever anything I can do to help, let me know.” And he replied that same day, if I’m remembering correctly. And he said, “Come be a student manager.”
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
And I said yes. I had no idea what it meant.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And I show up maybe two or three days later, and I am an equipment manager, folding towels and doing laundry for Baylor men’s basketball.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
And it’s very... they just throw you right in. And so you’re in the locker room, like, getting everything ready for the guys before practice, after practice, for games. You’re on the court helping, you know, rebound and pass balls and those kinds of things. I was so bad at passing a basketball. When I threw, it was so bad that Scott Drew called me into his office. He probably remembers this. And he taught me how to throw a chest pass with spin on it. Like, how embarrassing is that?
Jimmy Soni
So just so I have this clear. So you were, you’re there and you’re passing basketballs. Did the players say something? Did they know something? Or he just installed...
Ryan Resch
How bad... Coach Drew. Okay, this is Coach Drew. This is why he’s a national championship coach. Because he sees these things and he fixes them.
Jimmy Soni
Right. Even in his student manager.
Ryan Resch
Exactly. Exactly. And that, I think it says a lot about him, but it also says, I guess it’s like an early lesson...
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Like the nature of detail.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Sport and winning, these things. Because if you throw a knuckleball, if you throw a ball without any spin, you can break someone’s finger.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And jam their finger. Right? God forbid it’s on a shooting hand.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. Wait, is that true? Sorry, is that true in... So you’re saying in basket... Knuckleballs are a baseball term, right?
Ryan Resch
But it is, yeah. So a ball with no spin.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
So I wasn’t putting any spin on my chest pass. I was just literally chucking the ball. I was accurate. Like, accuracy was not the issue. This is actually getting spin and rotation on the ball, which the best shooters can tell you about, because you have to put backspin on the ball in order to actually guide it to the target that you’re launching. Don’t ask me about shooting. I’m not...
Jimmy Soni
Not the expert. Okay, so just out of curiosity, if we take a step back in the story... I mean, I want to go a bunch of different places, but let’s talk about living in seven different places before the age of 18. Right. Because that is not an experience that I had. I’m assuming actually most listeners are pretty geographically... As a kid, you know, your parents do tend to want to stay in one place by design. Your parents can’t, right? So what was it like being the new kid all the time? Right. Like, was that... I mean, I’m sure this shaped your life. I’m asking, how did it shape your life?
Ryan Resch
Yeah. I think the most obvious is what I’ve already mentioned, where you don’t have a sense of home in the traditional way that people think about that. Where I’m just now learning, so we still have a house in Phoenix. Love Phoenix. Very actually attached to that house. And that is the first kind of time that I’ve felt that I can call a place home.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And that has been a very kind of transformative experience for me. The other aspects of it, you become very adaptable and you become very malleable. You could enter any space and be comfortable. I’m also an only child, so I have no brothers or sisters. This was just me and my parents running around the country and then over to Germany. And you’re able to talk to people and you’re able to introduce yourself, maybe not so comfortably when you’re 12.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
But you know, you start, you get reps at it.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
I think probably the more important thing is I was forced into situations where I had to get reps at introducing myself and telling people and showing people who I am, as I’m also trying to figure that out throughout the rest of my life.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Or growing up, rather. And it does leave you with kind of a few things. One of them is I’m always moving. Like, not moving homes necessarily now, but I am always constantly in a new place. So it’s very hard for me to stay still.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
This is why sports was so good for me. Because you’re on two week east coast road trips and you’re playing in Toronto and then tomorrow you have a game in Philly and you’re just kind of moving around a lot. And then it also leaves you just with this sense of confidence, if you’re kind of maturing into that space, where you can just enter spaces.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And be okay.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
In a way that maybe somebody who hasn’t had that experience just needs more reps at it.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. So this ties to my next question, which connects to the time with Baylor and with Coach Drew. You know, there are a lot of people who watch sports as casual fans or as kids kind of admiring athletes from afar, and there’s a certain impenetrability to the world of sports. You think, well, if I don’t have that level of talent, there’s no way for me to get involved in sports. Right. And so for you, you do this extraordinary thing, which is, like, as a sophomore, you take a gig that puts you at the very, very bottom rung of the organization. When you sent that email, like, if you can think back that far, that’s a pretty extraordinary... Like, I’ll give you an example. I’m suddenly sitting here so jealous that you did that. Because I went to Duke and basketball’s a religion.
Ryan Resch
They have a whole manager program.
Jimmy Soni
And I would have been like, I would have been applying if I had known that was even a possibility. Right. But I never knew it was a possibility. And so my question is, how did you... Was it in that moment, was it a desire to be closer to sports, or was it just kind of on a whim? Like, what motivates you to do that? Because it really does shape the rest of your trajectory.
Ryan Resch
It did. I think it’s all of those things that you’re saying. The idea came to me because my boss, actually, at the campus tour guide center...
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
She had a Baylor basketball poster on her wall in her office, and we would always talk about the games and Baylor basketball. It’s an excellent program. We’re still excellent. And this was kind of the first period of, like, Scott Drew’s excellence was those, like, 2010 to 2014, really.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
When I was there.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Those years. And so we...
Jimmy Soni
That was a nice subtle wave. And, like, you know, I might have had something to do...
Ryan Resch
Well, they won the National...
Jimmy Soni
Once I fixed those passes I was passing back to the players, everything got better.
Ryan Resch
And she, we would just talk about it so much, and I think I maybe just said offhand, like, “I wonder how you even begin to get involved in that.”
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And she was like, “Just email Scott Drew,” or something like that.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And this was, it’s so commonplace now. If you want to reach someone, it’s their company name, their first initial, last name, or their first name@company name.com, or whatever it is. I think that was still a bit of a foreign concept back in, whatever it was, 2012.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And so I was probably very nervous to send it.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
But it also, like you said, it sparked all of this. And it’s why I have this rule that if someone reaches out to me...
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And wants advice on how to get into sport, then I will at least talk to them one time so that we can go through this process of, hey, you’re in college, you want to figure out how to do this. You need to find the director of basketball operations for your team, send them an email saying that you want to be a student manager and ask if they have that program. And the reason I do that is because I didn’t have that guidance. I did it. And it’s cool now because there’s actually a few people around the league that were undergrads that reached out, that became managers at Tennessee and other schools that are now in the NBA.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
Because of it. But I think I’m a bit of a venturer now, is how I can describe it. And in order to do that well, you just have to have the agency to send the email. Right? Just send the email. If they don’t respond, everything’s okay.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Find the next thing.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And then keep going.
Jimmy Soni
That’s great. Okay, so you did mention this, but Baylor was a serious, and it’s still a serious program. I mean, you went to the, I think it was a 2021 championship, right?
Ryan Resch
Yes, it was Covid. It was the Covid tournament. Because I did not get to go, unfortunately.
Jimmy Soni
Oh, okay. You know, during your tenure, they were really starting their climb. So what did you see in that culture? Like, what was it that made Baylor stand out from other comparable programs?
Ryan Resch
I will say one of the things that I understand now that I did not understand then was the coaches always shouldering the blame for the players. Always. And behind closed doors, you know, publicly as well, that one’s more obvious. Like, a lot of coaches do that. But even behind closed doors, a lot of the conversations would center around, okay, if this player is turning the ball over, how do we teach them not to do that? How do we put them in a position not to do that? And I think that’s notable because obviously sport is extremely emotional.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
It is very volatile. You’re going to lose three games in a row at some point.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And you have to really have this stability in order to ride that. And the easy thing to do there is to get all pissed off and start blaming the players. Say that you need better players, you need more talent, whatever. And maybe that is objectively true. If you are going up against a Duke that has the top five guys in the class, like, whatever, like, you still need to figure out how to beat them. But to see a coaching staff led by Scott Drew, Jerome Tang, a lot of the folks that are still there, shoulder that blame. And then they would always tell them, they would tell me, they would be like, “It’s our fault.”
Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.
Ryan Resch
And I would say, “I don’t understand this. We’re not the ones turning the ball over.” Because I was so, like, petulant. And then I get it now, like, having gone through everything that I went through at the Suns and everything that’s come after. Like, I understand now that when you ask about the culture of that space, you need to create a teaching culture, like an actual learning culture, where somebody can make a mistake, like turning the ball over or missing a shot, and then know that it’s not going to result in punishment, it’s going to result in a lesson. Maybe that lesson is hard, right? It’s tough love. But there is going to be a lesson involved in it.
Jimmy Soni
Can I ask you this? This question is a bit more just personal perspective. But, you know, when you’re a college student, sometimes you have a too healthy sense of your own importance, right? And I’ve got to believe, like, you’re a very smart guy and you’re studying political science, you know, and you’re at Baylor and you have a good head about you, and now you are folding towels, right? Like, how did you put your ego to the side? And was it a rude awakening? Like, you get in, you think student manager is going to do all kinds of interesting things, and now you’re folding towels and you’re learning how to pass better. What was that like? Like, is there a part of this that was just, you already knew what you were getting into, or was it now the proximity of the game was the payoff? Like, it was just you wanted to be a part of this and you figured this was the way to do it.
Ryan Resch
I did not know what I was getting myself into. It’s funny that you asked that, because one of my fondest memories is on Sundays at Baylor, people are at church and Ryan was cleaning the gym. I was cleaning the practice gym. And I loved it because you had to get this big pole out, put towels on it, and, like, drag this pole all the way across the court in order to clean it. And it was just a very cathartic, like, meditative. Meditative, that’s exactly what it was. You would turn on a podcast or music or something, and you would just do it, and then you would clean the gym. And I don’t remember having kind of an adverse reaction to any of it, although I probably did at some point, years, when I was head manager my senior year. Right? Did I act probably some way where it was like, you know, now this is beneath me, the young manager can do it? Probably.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
But what you learn in doing it genuinely, when you are the person putting out the loops that have all of the jerseys and the shorts and the socks and everything on the player’s chair, it’s behind a locked door, so if you’re not doing it, player can’t get dressed, player can’t practice. And so you’re able to actually experience, like, the operational chain of how we go from this nice idea, all right, let’s run a basketball team, to, no, these are all of the dirty steps and the details that it takes to get it done.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And I think that was a huge payoff for me, especially my last year at the Suns when I did run the daily operations of the franchise.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Where it was like, I knew what our equipment manager was going through.
Jimmy Soni
Okay.
Ryan Resch
Where he’s dragging these trunks around constantly, him and his assistant. And how do we lighten that load for those people who are extremely important to get this done.
Jimmy Soni
So at some point during your tenure at Baylor, you become the guy who has the data, who has the numbers. So what’s chapter two? In excruciating detail, describe, like, you know, spare no story there. How do you go from towels to analytics and spreadsheets? And you’re helping the coach think differently about the game. When does that transition start to happen?
Ryan Resch
So I was head manager my senior year, and political science was my passion. Basketball was my hobby. Like, that was kind of the differentiation that I put there. That’s really the only two things I had, outside of friend group, obviously. But we would be at the gym till 3am scouting the next opponent, and, like, at crazy hours.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
Still, even in the NBA, crazy hours. And I graduated, I went to go get a PhD in political science at the University of Missouri. There was a professor there that I wanted to study under for American Political Development. And around, was it my sophomore, it was either my sophomore or my junior year of undergrad, I was introduced to data science and statistics through econometrics and political science. And when I kind of dug deeper into that world, I realized, oh, my brain is actually extremely logical. And, like, coding came naturally to me. Data came naturally to me. I still love theory. I still love philosophy, liberal arts, all of those things, for sure. How do we blend these two things? I go to Mizzou for a year and we’re working on these papers and this research, and I just have this feeling that’s like, this is just not it for me. This is not right for me. Different than when I, you know, quit campus tour guide to go to basketball. This was like, no, this is fundamentally not the place for me.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And I think what I ultimately settled on, which is kind of a principle that I now carry throughout life, is I don’t want to study problems. I want to actually solve the problem. Now that requires you to study them in order to solve them. Yeah, but we’re not going to actually solve it if we are just kind of writing papers and going about our day. I want to actually do. I want to do all that, and then I want to do it to see if we’re right or not about it. And I decided that I was going to leave the program, so I quit. And I did not know what I was going to do. I had absolutely no idea. It is probably the scariest period of my life because I just had no concept of what else I could be doing. Right.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And I happened to go to the Big 12 tournament, which is the conference that Baylor, I think they’re still in.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
I can’t keep up with the conf...
Jimmy Soni
I know. Neither can I. It seems to change on a dime.
Ryan Resch
It’s, yeah, wild. And I went to the Big 12 tournament, spent a few days with the team again and realized, okay, I think I just missed the team environment. So I called Scott Drew again, and he answered again. And I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but do you have any advice for me?” And he was like, “Well, I just got done talking to Tom Izzo at Michigan State,” who’s a good friend of his.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And legendary coach.
Jimmy Soni
Legendary. Yeah.
Ryan Resch
“And he just hired someone to do data science and statistics for them. Can you come do it for me?” I said, “Sure.”
Jimmy Soni
That’s amazing.
Ryan Resch
And that was amazing. Probably a month leading up to... Well, first we had to get me into a grad program because this was very late. It was like April at this time. Thankfully, that all worked out.
Jimmy Soni
And why did you need a new grad program? Because he couldn’t hire you unless you were a student?
Ryan Resch
I was going to be a grad assistant. Yeah. I was going back as a grad assistant.
Jimmy Soni
Got it.
Ryan Resch
So there’s, like, the student manager program for undergrads. There are grad assistants. Typically grad assistants are going to follow the coaching route, although more and more commonly it’s video analytics and whatnot as part of it. And I guess GM now for these colleges. And so I go back to Baylor in, whatever was that, 2015. 2015, spring of 2015. Yeah. And Coach Drew’s like, “I want lineup data.” Okay. And lineup data did not exist at this time. Like, there was no easy accessible, like, public form of lineup data that you could also trust. You know, it was a whole kind of amorphous concept still.
Jimmy Soni
And just for context, like, I remember, I think Moneyball came out in 2003. The movie is like 2011, something like that. So we’re not in the... we’re still, we’re post Moneyball, but we are pre, like, the digitization of everything, sports especially.
Ryan Resch
Probably at that level. And it also started in baseball. So Moneyball is the baseball book, obviously. And then it kind of slowly made its way across football and soccer and, you know, obviously lacrosse and those other ones. And then basketball was also really starting to take off. Daryl Morey popularizes, you know, threes and layups only with Moreyball. And that’s kind of the launching of the analytics movement in the NBA at, like, a popular level.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And Moneyball kind of joins along those lines. So the mid-2010s was, I would say, really where teams and people took it more seriously in basketball.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And so there was just no lineup data for college basketball that we could rely on. And to this day, I don’t know how I had this idea. But in basketball, all sports, you have the play by play.
Jimmy Soni
Yep.
Ryan Resch
That says, okay, you know, your point guard is subbing in, your shooting guard is subbing out. Point guard made a two point shot, assisted by your small forward. Along those lines, in text.
Jimmy Soni
Yes.
Ryan Resch
Pre AI.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, pre AI.
Ryan Resch
Early days of machine learning and AlexNet and those things. And I scraped those play by plays.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
And from the text, I turned it into a box score and so we could build the... And I’ll never forget this. This all hinged on two things being true. The sub ins, sub outs had to be on the play by play.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Else this wouldn’t work.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And the starters, there had to be a connotation of who started the game.
Jimmy Soni
Huh.
Ryan Resch
So typically that would be the first five players listed. Not always, but thank God there was an asterisk next to the starters.
Jimmy Soni
Just so I have this right, so I’m understanding this correctly. There was no box score data for Baylor or maybe even men’s college basketball at circa whatever year this is, 2015. Nobody is tabulating these and putting them on ESPN. Wow.
Ryan Resch
For individuals, yes. Yeah. Like, you can go to College Basketball Reference, amazing website. They have the individual box scores and whatnot because that comes from the scorer’s table, the statistics from the game. This was, no, okay, now we want to know five man combinations. So for those who don’t know, a lineup would be your point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, center.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Five man combinations. How are they performing together?
Jimmy Soni
Got it.
Ryan Resch
I’m not going to say it’s like a brand new concept. Right. Getting that data at scale so we can have it for Baylor and our opponents.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Was a novel problem to solve.
Jimmy Soni
Okay. So you scrape the data and you build something to scrape the data, and then what happens after that?
Ryan Resch
We converted the text into the box score. Yeah. So point guard made two point shot. That becomes two points, two point field goal attempt, two point field goal make. So each of the little traits that you can, the variables that would make up that action, you can now register and log it in your box score. And then you sum it all up and you aggregate by lineup. And then, you know, I think, and this is what AI I think is teaching so many of us, is once you have the data extracted and structured, you can do so many different cuts of it. And so now we have five man, four man, three man, two man. Like, what about these different combinations of guys? Like, it just kind of exploded in that way. And coach was happy with it and it started just kind of influencing rotations and substitution patterns and those kinds of things.
Jimmy Soni
So, yeah, this is where I want to go a bit deeper. Because, I mean, famously, the scenes in the movie in Moneyball, but then also as described in the book, is there’s a graft versus host problem. Right? Like, you have a person who’s very smart with this kind of stuff and there’s an allergic reaction from people who believe it’s going to sully the sanctity of sport. Right? You’re going to add an impurity, which is like logic and reason, in something that ought to be subject to competition and fate and individual effort and all these other kind of more, call it more ethereal, things. Right? And into that you’re introducing, like, logic and regression analyses and actually looking at data. Did you face any of that when you were starting to pull these things together? Like, were you sheepish? Was the coach resistant? Was there any part of the organization that was like, “Ryan, we love this stuff, but we know how to play the game and you don’t. You couldn’t even throw a pass until he coached you to throw the pass better.”
Ryan Resch
Maybe that’s why it worked. Because this coach knew that I wasn’t trying to front as though I knew how to do these things. I definitely have run into that resistance. Yes. But I’ve also been extremely fortunate that the principals that I have worked for, so Scott Drew, James Jones, these are people who are very rational thinkers to begin with.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And so they want this data, they want this information. And so that helps, number one. But what it does teach you is this incredible lesson of, like, and I think that this is important for data folks and maybe more, like, rationally minded folks, is there is a difference between being effective and being right. And this is something that I had to learn at the Suns. And it came from kind of exactly what you’re describing, which is if sport is this constrained, bounded game that we have all of the rules for, we know exactly how it’s structured, there is a very clear scoring and reward system, we can apply game theory, we can optimize it for strategic and tactical choice. If that’s true, then why are we not doing it, right?
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And the answer in my mind always came back to what I called the communication problem, which is we are fundamentally lacking the ability to communicate why these insights matter to help you make better coaching decisions, or you make better playing decisions, or you make better executive level decisions like who to put on the roster and who to take off.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And I think there are a host of ways to solve that. The language that you choose, the tone in which you speak to people, like the more maybe ephemeral concepts that are qualitative, maybe more quant driven folks don’t naturally move toward. But I think also, and this is where I hope it goes in sport, is team building is a beautiful art and a beautiful science. Like, there’s really a blending of it to do it well. It’s the cultural aspects that you asked about earlier, as well as, if you think about kind of a two by two grid when you’re making team building decisions, whether it’s a roster or your staff, you know, for a job somewhere else, you have to focus on the person and you have to focus on the professional. So instead of person, for sports it’d be a player. So player and professional. You have to focus on the league’s perception, so kind of the in a vacuum perception.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And you have to focus on, for my team, what is that going to be? So this player X might be an excellent three point shooter in the league standards. Absolutely excellent. But they can only get their threes off of very specific actions. Those actions are not good for our team because we don’t have the person to create those actions. And so I objectively believe that you are an excellent three point shooter, but you’re not going to help our team right now. You have to kind of hold this balance, and that’s a very human thing, is to hold these conflicting and competing views in your mind. And I do think that where data helps is quantifying and telling that story of player, professional, person, professional. How are they viewed kind of in a vacuum within their entire cohort, and then how are they viewed for our team specifically under our conditions? And if we can get the data, with the help of AI, if we can get the data more down that more human story...
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Then I think it becomes more easy to apply it. And once it becomes easier to apply, it’s more helpful.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And once it’s helpful, it’s valued.
Jimmy Soni
What’s an example from your days at Baylor where, because you’re really creating this stuff from whole cloth, right, and there’s not anybody feeding you this, you don’t have APIs you’re plugging into, you’re doing this largely on your own, I assume. What’s an example of something that shifted because of something you found? It can be small, it can be big. But, like, what’s an example of when you had an insight and you said, this is, I’ve generated new knowledge here, and then something shifted in the organization as a result?
Ryan Resch
At Baylor specifically?
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
I think one of them, we had a forward who, absolutely excellent scorer. Yeah, absolutely excellent. Six eight, six nine, you know, very smooth scoring the ball, and he didn’t get a ton of minutes. And part of that was because, like, he wasn’t the hardest worker, did not kind of present as, you know, like, a cultural anchor of the team, those kinds of things. And I’m not saying that is a deserved reputation or not, but when you looked at the numbers and you said, okay, when this player is on the floor, like, per minute, the impact that this guy is having is actually extremely high. Okay, how do we fix these things that are going wrong so that maybe he shows up on time? Or how do we put a better environment around him where he’s playing with certain guys who are going to get the most out of him, because his per minute efficiency is so high? Let’s not turn a blind eye, but let’s focus on fixing those things that we really dislike, that we want to vent about, so that we can unlock this for the team.
Jimmy Soni
Got it.
Ryan Resch
So that we can unlock this scoring prowess for the team. Because it’s really easy, again, sports is extremely emotional, it’s really easy to be focused on, we just lost, you were late to shoot around.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
You’re one of the reasons that we lost. I’m not saying that’s not true.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
But the payoff of unlocking that...
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
We can now see what that looks like.
Jimmy Soni
Got it.
Ryan Resch
And that’s where, you know, we talk, I think that data is a mechanism to create focus. Yeah. That helps you focus on, if we can fix this set of issues, we unlock this.
Jimmy Soni
That’s really interesting. Was this common in college basketball at the time? Like, I know you said Tom Izzo is what turned Scott Drew onto it. Had it become commonplace for coaches to hire somebody on their team to do this kind of data science?
Ryan Resch
I wouldn’t say it was common. I think Coach Drew was definitely ahead of his time. Tom Izzo, ahead of his time. Ken Pomeroy, who’s still a big name in college basketball data, had been around for a few years and he was kind of the one that was known. But this was pre NIL. So this was pre all of the money.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
I’m like, you want to talk about pre NIL? I got in trouble by the NCAA for buying honey roasted peanut butter.
Jimmy Soni
What?
Ryan Resch
Because I had no idea. So the NCAA was extremely strict pre NIL. And the meals, what classified as a meal, was extremely strict as well. And so we could not provide food under certain conditions to guys because then it would be considered a meal. If they get a meal, it’s an impermissible benefit.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
Oh, it was a whole bureaucracy. I mean, it still is a bureaucracy.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
But on a different level. And so, look, according to Baylor compliance, adding honey to peanut butter made it a meal at that time.
Jimmy Soni
Adding honey to peanut butter that a player was going to eat...
Ryan Resch
Yes.
Jimmy Soni
Made what you did impermissible.
Ryan Resch
Yes.
Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.
Ryan Resch
It’s absurd. Absolutely crazy.
Jimmy Soni
That is bananas.
Ryan Resch
It is. And you talk about, you know, you go back to your previous question about data and logic entering sport, the human component. The bureaucracy of it all is what removes the human component. Whereas the player needs this. Not like, let’s put aside the fact that people just love peanut butter. Like, it’s amazing and I can’t have it in the house. Players need this to recover. They need the sugar, they need the protein, they need the fat. Right? So you are instead focused on this arbitrary definition of impermissible benefit instead of what’s best for the players.
Jimmy Soni
Right. That’s right.
Ryan Resch
Yeah. I think that’s what’s actually removing it.
Jimmy Soni
Right. You know, it’s a bit of a detour, but I am curious, because there are very strong opinions on what the NIL changes have done to college sports. And I’m not well versed enough, so if you could give a little bit of a brief on what has changed. But my own sense as a fan from afar is that today’s, particularly college basketball, because that’s the one I follow, but today’s collegiate athletic environment, it feels like the Wild West. Like, there was just a lawsuit in Colorado that allowed an additional year of eligibility for a bunch of NCAA players. And now all of a sudden men’s college basketball for the year ahead is, it’s scrambled. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know who’s going to come back, how they can come back, how long they can stay. If you get an appeals court to say one thing, it might change the decision. This could rise to the level of the Supreme Court. What do you make, as everybody who’s been there, what do you make of contemporary college athletics?
Ryan Resch
I find it very hard to keep up with, for all of the reasons that you’re describing, which is there are institutions involved now that we would have never considered. Like, at our time, we’re not thinking about, okay, what is the Supreme Court going to decide on this case? And will that affect whether my player is eligible or not?
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
The rules there were very clear and I think we appreciated the time. I think that the positive side of it is that these players who have this unbelievable gift and these incredible talents, both skill wise, physically, athletically, all of it, they are now receiving compensation for these things. I think that is, like, an economic benefit and a good thing that is occurring. Where it has gone poorly, I think most importantly where it’s gone poorly, is the continuity of teams. And transfers were a problem pre NIL.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
So NIL is name, image, likeness, where you are now paid for your name, image, likeness. And there’s a host of rules around how you can receive your money. But it has led to NIL plus what they call the transfer portal in college, where players can now basically leave teams and schools whenever they want to, put your name into the transfer portal, sometimes in an effort to maximize your NIL.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
It has led to rapid turnover with teams and makes the coaches’ and the now college general managers’ jobs harder. That job did not exist when I was in college.
Jimmy Soni
There was no college GM?
Ryan Resch
There was no college GM when I was there. We were just scraping play by play.
Jimmy Soni
Exactly. Doing it in the Stone Age.
Ryan Resch
Exactly, exactly. And the turnover of these teams is just so high now, where players are leaving, going to the transfer portal, maybe trying to maximize their cash, whatever they deem the most important. And you lose, like, Duke does lose this period of where you guys had Christian Laettner for years, or, yeah, Jahlil Okafor and those guys only stay, Tyus Jones only stayed for one season. But you still had those faces on the team that you recognized year over year. Baylor was the exact same way. You don’t really have a lot of that anymore. And I think that loses, again, back to the human side of sport, that loses, when everybody’s kind of in the foxhole together playing this zero sum game every night, it’s win or lose. Yeah. That is where those bonds are really formed. Where I can still call the coaching staff at Baylor, or the grad assistants at Baylor, or some of the players at Baylor, and we’ll talk about, you know, what the 20, whatever it was, 16 Sweet 16 at Madison Square Garden, where South Carolina completely dismantled us. Like, we still, you know, talk about that. Right? And you just don’t have those memories, that experience or this camaraderie.
Jimmy Soni
I do have one question on this one. It’s interesting. I think about this just as a casual fan, but also kind of the challenge here is, on the one hand, there were always going to be people who were going to be one and dones, right? Who were going to come in, light college basketball on fire, do their year and then go off and play in the NBA. Even before that, you could skip college altogether and go straight to the NBA the way Kobe and others have done. At the same time, you now have money that’s available to you to be paid to stay in college. Right? So isn’t the argument against what you just said, well, yes, it’s true, people can job hop effectively, or college hop, right, and go from one school to another using a transfer portal to maximize their winnings and earnings. But on the other hand, they’re actually getting paid while they’re in school and thus can stay in school longer, right? And then it’s on the program and on the coach and on the university to make that both worth their while financially and make sure that they feel like it’s a place where they want to call home for X number of years. Right? So isn’t there a little bit of, this actually took some of the, it created the safety valve for the pressure to leave for the league, like, too early or skip school or, like, to be a one and done, because now you could be a two or three and done, right? Or a four and done and still get paid for your time. I’m not well versed enough, but does that argument have any weight?
Ryan Resch
I want to say yes, more so in football. Like, I don’t know exactly what that would look like, but anecdotally it feels like I’ve seen more of those stories of someone choosing to stay in college football. Yeah. And NIL money is larger in college football than it is college basketball. Unless you are at a Duke.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Or a Kentucky. So I think it’s more true in football. I could be wrong on the basketball side of things. I don’t know if it has yet reached the NBA side where, yeah, like, the contracts in the NBA are fundamentally different than the NFL, than the Major League Baseball. Each of these leagues has a very different economic structure. Yeah, the NBA’s is extremely player friendly.
Jimmy Soni
Okay.
Ryan Resch
Very, very strong players association, especially back in the 2010s when they were negotiating those really core CBAs. And the players will get, if you’re drafted in the first round, two years guaranteed, two year team option. But you’ll usually look at all four years guaranteed at some point, and then from there, if you’re a good player, you’re making 20 plus million dollars a year now. So the payoff for college basketball may not be there yet. Or I do think your argument has a lot of merit, is that the onus is now on program building. Right? You need to build a program.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Which is where the Baylors and the Dukes and these other schools who have done it are benefiting, with, like, these brand name institutions who have built actual programs. There’s now a value on that, there’s a premium on that.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
At some point this will all be, as things always are, regulated to some degree. There will be more rules in place about how much you can pay under what conditions. Like, some kind of salary cap system. Yeah. So I do think that there is a premium that’s now placed on building an actual program. So if you do have one of these brands like a Baylor or a Duke, there is a lot of value there. Once we have some form of a salary cap system, where I think that’ll happen at some point in the future, marry those constraints with what you’ve described of that program culture building, now you’ve got a more professional sport environment there. How do you build an Oklahoma City Thunder in college basketball? How do you build a Pittsburgh Steelers in college basketball? You kind of need both the economic constraints and the recognition of how valuable those programs are.
Jimmy Soni
Right. Ironically, these deals could lead to people, like, completing their degrees, right? The great irony of this might be that so then every worth the student athlete, right? It really could. Because if you think about it, at some point, all other things being equal, if there is a salary cap system and you are constrained on the economic side, then you would just have, you know, all schools would probably reach, like, theoretical limit of whatever those caps are, then program design and, call it, like, student retention matter a great deal. And if you are a coach that has a history of winning and producing NBA level talent and a culture that people actually want to be a part of, and you are at a school where people want to stay to finish their degrees, you as a player, you’d have serious, if you’re not a superstar, if you’re not a one and done, right, you’d have a serious reason to stick around for four years and earn a degree.
Ryan Resch
Incentive alignment. Yeah, that’s right.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, I like that. And I don’t know, I’m speaking about it in a total vacuum. I don’t know how these decisions actually happen, but it seems to me to be one of the kind of, I know that there’s been a lot of coverage on it and a lot of back and forth on it, sure, but actually I have found this to be one of the most interesting things to be happening in college sports. That is an economics question and a psychology question and a culture question. Not even a, what does the law say and doesn’t say. Because right now what’s interesting is the law isn’t clear. Congress is being petitioned 20 different ways on it. There are already cases underway. So it is interesting to me to think about what is a player who’s good but not good enough to leave and, like, kind of likes where they’re at, but sees that the grass might be greener on the other side. Right? Like, I wonder how people are thinking about this.
Ryan Resch
I do think that you’re probably onto something there, where it is, incentive alignment will happen at some point, it feels like, in this space. And it probably does benefit everybody in the end. I think right now it’s already so hard to recruit in college sports to begin with.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
That it has made the jobs of these head coaches infinitely harder. Yeah. Only because there aren’t the economic constraints that are specific right now. And because it’s made it so hard, that’s probably where some of the negative, like, publicity and whatnot comes in. It is interesting, though, to think, like, we’re sitting here today and we don’t bat an eye on college basketball players or football players making millions of dollars.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And that was, I mean, unheard of.
Jimmy Soni
Just a few years...
Ryan Resch
Absolutely unheard of. Recruiting visits had very strict budgets and, yeah, you could only do certain things.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
It is, it’s wild.
Jimmy Soni
It’s wild. It’s also, I remember when I was a freshman at Duke, when by the time I got to my junior year, senior year, they did a deal with Apple where all the freshmen at Duke for a given year got iPods. And I remember being so mad that I had missed the free iPod window. If I was a college athlete who finished up at Duke after these deals went into effect, so the deals weren’t around when I was around, yeah, I’d be livid. I would be livid because the size is actually significant, life changing amounts for these players.
Ryan Resch
It really is. And that’s why the transfer portal is so active.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
It really is.
Jimmy Soni
Right. So now we go, you’re at Baylor and you’re a grad assistant and you are furnishing analytics and insights for the team. How long are you at Baylor? And then tell us how the story gets from there to the Phoenix Suns.
Ryan Resch
I would be at Baylor for two years in chapter two, post PhD. The summer after the first year, I got an internship with the Phoenix Suns analytics department on the basketball operations side. So every NBA team, every professional sports team, more or less, is split between sport operation and business operation. So business operation would be tickets, sponsorship, sales, media, kind of everything you’d think under the business banner. And then the sport operation is building and managing and operating the team. Yeah. I was sent by a classmate this analytics internship in Phoenix. I did not have a plan about what I was going to do, and I told myself, probably the only path forward is in the NBA, because, again, it’s not a huge thing in college basketball. Coach Drew would eventually, like, consider bringing on this position, but he would also push me out and say, “You have to go to the NBA,” when that opportunity presented itself, which I’m very grateful for, because it would have been easy to stay.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And I got this internship.
Jimmy Soni
So how did that... Well, walk us through it. How, you know, sometimes these internships don’t just happen. Did you just apply? You applied, you interviewed?
Ryan Resch
I applied.
Jimmy Soni
That was it.
Ryan Resch
Applied and interviewed. And I think, you know, again, it’s funny, it comes back to the communication side of it, I think.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Where when I was interviewing with the individual who would hire me, the then director of analytics of the Suns, there was a question around, so the Phoenix Suns were really bad.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
At this time. So one of the worst teams in the league. There was a playoff drought, and the league was just starting to play faster, shoot more threes, have more space, and the Suns were not doing these things. And the Suns were still playing two centers at the time. And I was asked, like, “What would you look at to show the coaching staff not to play two centers?” Very interesting question.
Jimmy Soni
That’s very interesting.
Ryan Resch
Very specific question. Yeah. And I’m sitting there just thinking about it, and I said, “Is the transition defense really bad?” And the response was, “You’re the first person to answer that.”
Jimmy Soni
Huh.
Ryan Resch
And I said, “Well, we can just show them that, like, where do we rank in transition defense? This combination, when they’re together, is very poor.” Yeah. But it has to come back to the why. Well, the why is that, you know, it’s very difficult to play two centers because they’re, you know, the tallest players typically on the floor, the heaviest players on the floor. And they’re usually not the fastest, they’re usually the slowest. And if you’re playing both in a league that is increasing in pace and speed, and they’re just going to outrun you at some point, like, that’s what’s going to happen. Yeah. And the data was showing that.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And so my understanding is that answer helped get that internship. And I was very grateful to get the call.
Jimmy Soni
Just out of curiosity, they had not discovered this on their... You didn’t discover it. You knew the answer? Because that was a very...
Ryan Resch
Well, I mean, it was a guess. Yeah, because I didn’t see the data. I didn’t have anything in front of me. I was just proposed the question.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And they had the data. They knew the answer.
Jimmy Soni
Got it.
Ryan Resch
I think what they were looking for, which is a very interesting data interview topic, is, can this person creatively identify something? Can you think, I guess, outside the box of whatever the, I don’t know what other answer there might be.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
But I get the internship and I do the three months, maybe three or four months over the summer. In the NBA, so the NBA calendar is July 1 to June 30 every year. So the salary cap resets on July 1. So that’s when you can start signing players again. That’s why the draft is at the very end of June. It’s the Finals and the draft at the very end of the NBA calendar. And I started, I believe, right before the draft. Yeah, it was right before the draft. I did a little bit of work on that.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Where it’s just basic, hey, interpret these statistics for these draft prospects. This would have been the summer that the Suns drafted Marquese Chriss and Dragan Bender at 4 and 8 in the lottery. That led into Summer League. I’m sorry, free agency, where we’re just doing, again, what would you value, like, this player’s contract at based on what they’ve done in the past? And I was just sitting in my cubicle, which was just doing that work by myself. And went to Summer League, had a good time. August is completely dead. And that was the end of the internship. And I was fortunate enough that they kept my database access on. So for whatever reason, they decided that was worth it. And I just kept producing work when I went back to Baylor.
Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.
Ryan Resch
So I was still working at Baylor and I was still doing, like, little side projects.
Jimmy Soni
Oh, that’s great.
Ryan Resch
For Suns analytics, eventually building out the web application that they used in the war room, which is where the draft is held, in Phoenix in 2016. No, 2017. And probably because I just kept doing work, they’re like, “We just feel bad. We know we have to hire this guy.” And they hired me as the coaching analytics person, which effectively meant that I was hired to sit with the coaches, sit on the bench during games, and interpret statistics and data for the coaching staff. So, be that communication bridge that looks at the numbers and then is able to relay what exactly is going on.
Jimmy Soni
Got it. Out of curiosity, because having somebody like you in the background makes a lot of sense to me. Game’s done, the week is long, there’s nothing happening, your day job is looking at the analytics and helping to come up with insights. What does someone like you do in that role when you’re on the bench next to the coaches? Are they asking you specific questions? Or is it just, you know what, Ryan? Yeah, this makes you feel real good. We’ll have you here. It’s really just window dressing. You’re gonna have a clipboard. It’s not gonna have anything on it, but when the camera pans to you, you’ll have a clipboard there.
Ryan Resch
I mean, there are clips of me clapping on my clipboard. I laugh because it’s a little bit of a loaded question in that there is no purpose. Like, you kind of realize it, too, when you’re in the moment where it’s like, all right, it’s first quarter. Team’s taken eight shots.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Smallest sample size you can possibly imagine.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
I can tell you where it may go. Yeah. If we shoot enough shots, it may look like this and, right, regression to mean may occur. There’s a lot of qualitative maybes and, like, we’re kind of theoretically thinking these things. Yes. It’s not helpful in game. Like, it’s really not. And it goes back to something that I used to talk about with one of our coaches at Baylor, Coach T, where we would talk about, what is the best way to prepare for a game?
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Because I think maybe FiveThirtyEight, back in the day, did a study of how many decisions an NBA coach makes in a game. Some absurd number. Exactly what you would think. And you can’t, no human can process all of this information in real time. In real time, manage the players, manage the emotion of it all, manage your staff. Like, there’s so much going on in the moment. And what we eventually came up with was, like, you have to have plan A, which is we’re going in with this style of play, we’re going to do this offensively, defensively, our team knows how to do these things. And then you have to have plan B, which is, if plan A fails, we’re moving to plan B. Yeah. And then if you get to plan C, guys, we’re probably done. We’re probably losing. And, I mean, on the data side of it, it goes back to, like, whether it’s qualitative or quantitative information, your preparation needs to be there pregame.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Before that ball goes up at 7:07pm. Yeah. You need to be prepared. Right? Like, you need to have a coach or someone behind you that taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey, our goal was, you know, a three point attempt rate of 40% and we’re only at 35%.” Right? But then a good coach, their next question will be, okay, what’s wrong?
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Like, why are we so low?
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. And you’re saying this is happening at halftime? Or, well, after the game is over? Or you’re saying after the game’s over, before the next game, to understand what went on?
Ryan Resch
I think that you have to prepare definitely before. Yeah, no doubt. I think at halftime you have to have a very structured process that you go through. Basically you have, like, 15 minutes. Yeah. Some percentage of those minutes must be devoted to talking to your guys. That’s the most important thing. Some percentage at the beginning must be devoted to, okay, let’s review our strategy and our tactics and our style of play. Yeah. There’s a lot of value that can be done there if you can really refine that process. Obviously the pregame prep is extremely valuable. Right? Postgame debrief, hit or miss. Because it’s so emotional after a game. Like, you are coming off of an adrenaline high, whether you win or you lose, everyone is. So it’s really not the best time to chat right after your game.
Jimmy Soni
But as evidenced by any number of press conferences that go so badly awry.
Ryan Resch
Exactly.
Jimmy Soni
Right? And actually it explains the monotone, monosyllabic responses that a lot of players give to questions. Right? There’s no room for creativity after that kind of thing.
Ryan Resch
There’s not. Like, you’re emotionally depleted. Right? And there’s just, you don’t want to talk, you certainly don’t want to talk in front of the camera.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And it’s the in the moment data assistance that I think is, having literally done the job, I don’t think that there’s a lot of value that it’s going to create, because what you should be focusing on instead is training your coaches and the people making decisions in game how to think this way.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
So instead of me being like, “Hey, we’re not shooting enough threes”...
Jimmy Soni
Your coach, who is in church: “Get back to your cubicle.”
Ryan Resch
Right, exactly. Instead of saying that, you have a coach who says, “Hey, my job is the offense. I know what our threes should look like. I know how they’re generated and know what quality looks like. We are not getting enough off ball screen threes.”
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
We’re just not.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And that is useful information that helps the coach and helps the players. Whereas, “Hey, we’re not shooting enough threes” is not useful information. That’s a fun fact.
Jimmy Soni
Great. That’s a super fun fact. When you come into the organization, you know, as you mentioned, the Suns were coming off a bad stretch and there was a leadership change. There was also an ownership change. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like being a part of that? Because, so you finished up another year at Baylor, you’re doing all the side hustle work for the Suns. That is what it was. They hire you based on the strength of that side hustle work and then you join them. But you’re in the middle of chaos. Right? I mean, it was, the GM changed and the owners changed. So it was...
Ryan Resch
That changes constantly.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
I can tell you that it was the exact opposite of what Baylor was, which, I mean, Scott Drew is still the head coach at Baylor. He’s been there for, I mean, my goodness, 25 years now.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
And Phoenix was on, I believe it was the second coach in two years, and it would go on to be the third and then the fourth. Like, there was a whole host of change on the coaching side. We did go through a basketball operations executive change. So our general manager changed when I started full time. James Jones started, who was the player that I mentioned earlier from the Miami Heat. He had just retired, seven straight NBA Finals appearances, played with LeBron James on all of those teams. And LeBron publicly called him the greatest teammate of all time.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
And I can now attest to why. I love James dearly. And he starts full time the time that I start full time. He starts in the role that I would finish in. So there’s a bit of a, like, a bookend here.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And he’s coming from winning championships. I’m coming from Baylor basketball, where we’re second weekend NCAA tournament teams. We didn’t win the Big 12 yet, but we were in the championship game in the tournament quite a bit. And you go to losing.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
You go to losing.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And it is culture shock.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
James, I believe in his 17 year career, however long it was, missed the playoffs once. I’m coming from spoils and riches at Baylor.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And we just kind of bonded over this.
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
Ryan Resch
This weird culture of losing.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And there’s really no other way to say it. And I give him so much credit in that he had the perspective when he took over that, it’s very easy, you hire a GM, you hold the press conference: we’re going to compete for championships, we’re going to play hard, we’re going to do all these things. So easy. Like, you can win a press conference. It’s very easy to win a press conference. It’s not easy to win the game.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Like, those are two very different things. And James came in and his very first strategy, well, on day one, he did, you know, change over quite a bit of the staff.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Which I think was necessary at the time. And we became a very small, lean operation. I call this now the Startup Suns, for that period of time.
Jimmy Soni
Why were you not part of the changeover? Because you came in under the old management. Yeah. So how did you manage to stick around?
Ryan Resch
I mean, truthfully, I didn’t have an office. I didn’t have a desk. And James, being who James is, told me, like, “Sit on the other side of my desk and work.” Okay. So we just had a really strong relationship from that. He’s also a very rational thinker. He loves data, he loves technology. But he also understands that human component to such a degree as well. And he’s an unbelievable teacher, I think, too. And if you’re willing to learn from him, then you can become one of his people.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
But the first strategy that he implemented was raising the floor. It’s not championship ceiling, championship expectations. It was, no, guys, we’re going to raise the floor. Yeah. The floor is way too low. Like, the competitive floor, the talent floor. And this is not just players. And this is the beauty of having a former player as your lead executive.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Which I think is so important. Is the individual who has been in those championship games, who has won the title, who has made the threes, who has, you know, defended the best players in the league...
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Who understands what these players are going through. They will hold the rest of the organization to that same standard that the players will hold themselves to. And it’s so important. And he literally, he was like, “It’s not sexy, but raise the floor.”
Jimmy Soni
So how did you do that? Like, what are some of the key, both the data and analytics components in your job, but then also just organization wide. How did that happen?
Ryan Resch
You look at age first, and the Suns were extremely young. Yeah, it’s very popular in the NBA to tank. This is another huge thing in sports, is if we lose, then we’ll get a higher draft pick. If we get a higher draft pick, we will maximize our chances of getting an All-Star or franchise player. Yeah. Not incorrect. You know, if you get the number one pick in the draft, then, yeah, you’ll have a much higher chance of drafting an All-Star franchise player from that class than anyone who comes after you. That’s basic logic. Right? What the tanking debate fundamentally misses, because the Suns were publicly tanking and we were there at the very early days and went the exact opposite... What they were missing, the tanking proponents, I should say, are missing the, again, we come back to this, the human factor. Sports is an extremely unique environment. It is the only publicly played zero sum game in the world. I mean, literally everything’s public and there will be a winner, there will be a loser, and it is also time bound. So every year you get one year and then we’re resetting, go again. There’s no rollover effect. You don’t have to carry things over, any of that. When you think about that on a macro level with games, it’s true. But on a micro level as well, where these players, like, we’re drafting the replacements.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
It’s crazy when you think about, like, the cycle of this, and it’s arguably, like, deeply unfair as well. Where it’s like, someone who is an NBA player will get pushed out because we’re bringing in this 18 year old high potential. Yeah. And when we talked about, like, James raising the floor, it was finding the value in the older guy. Again, like, finding the value in the four year player, like Cam Johnson, who we drafted at 11, James’s first draft, and we got panned for it.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Cam has since gone on to have an incredible career. He’s a great person, he’s a great player. Like, fantastic.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And it’s things like, I mentioned the age. It’s also things like teaching the front office staff what the player is going through when you talk about tanking. Because they hear, “You want to draft my replacement.”
Jimmy Soni
Oh, interesting.
Ryan Resch
“You want to bring in the guy who’s going to take my job away.”
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Or the coach hears, “You want me to lose so that you can fire me.”
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And then we can continue. And you just can’t, like, it’s so hard to win a championship to begin with. Like, your odds are so infinitesimally small to do this to begin with, that if you don’t realize, like, the consequence of these strategic choices that you’re making, yes, you don’t have a chance.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And this is why, like, Oklahoma City, for example, took you to the tanking process extremely well. I don’t think that they ever publicly called it that, but...
Jimmy Soni
Of course not. I mean, this is one of the curious things about tanking, is you can’t say you’re tanking. If you’re tanking, you’ll get in trouble. Yeah.
Ryan Resch
The integrity of the game. But Oklahoma City, they did an amazing job of keeping their culture so strong. And I give Sam Presti all the credit to that. Like, he is a fantastic executive. Absolutely fantastic. And they built this, you know, this program where it’s, hey, we all know what we’re going to do for the next couple of years and then we hope that we’ll be champions on the other end of it. Yeah. And I think if you do it in that deliberate manner, right, then you definitely increase your chances of success. Yeah. It’s when you do it in kind of the manner that’s, I think we’re supposed to do this because we’re told that you should tank if you’re not good because you don’t want to be in the middle. Right? Like, you know, it comes down to, you understand the strategic consequences of the strategic decisions that you’re making.
Jimmy Soni
Interesting. So when you’re in the day to day of this, how is, I guess, how is the Suns job different than the Baylor job? When you got to that grad-- in both cases you’re looking at analytics, you’re looking at data. What were the differences between those two environments?
Ryan Resch
At face value, the roles were very different post James taking over the Suns. So that was when I became his chief of staff, director of strategy. He would then go on to win the 21 executive of the year. I believe it was 2021. And so the role was more expansive, for sure. Helping out in operations, salary cap if that was needed at the time, traveling with the team quite a bit to basically be a front office presence for them if something happened. Yeah. Whereas, it’s funny now that I say it, it sounds a little bit closer to the manager role, where it was kind of like the catch all situation and just being around to do these things that need to get done. Whereas the Baylor data roles and even those early Suns data roles were very, as you would think they are, behind a computer, looking at numbers, looking at spreadsheets. Thankfully, at that time in the NBA, well, that’s another difference, is the NBA had a much richer data set. So optical tracking data came online right around the time that I was an intern. A company called SportVU, which had installed cameras in all of the arenas, and they could track, I think it was 24 frames a second from six cameras at that time, the XY coordinates of the players directly using the ball. And now it’s XYZ coordinates with Hawk-Eye, which is the new camera provider. And so we were extremely data rich. And so we would spend a lot of time kind of playing in that sandbox of the XY coordinates.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And then as the role increased in scope, it was less of that hands on coding and more of program building, I think, is the way to think about it. And I kind of bounced around. I was very lucky that James trusted me so much. And over the course of my time at the Suns under James, led or managed everything except players and coaches in basketball operations. So scouting at one point for a couple of years, health and performance for a year, operations strategy, so data science, salary cap, those things. Yeah.
Jimmy Soni
So you go from Baylor and doing the data stuff to the Suns at a period of real transition for the Suns. Like, what is different about the job that you were doing in one, you know, in both cases you’re working with data and you’re trying to find insights that are going to help the team. What are the differences between the role in the NBA and the role in college?
Ryan Resch
Kind of at the top level, the NBA is a much richer data set. So when I joined the Suns, this was right around when optical tracking was taking off. So optical tracking was introduced to the NBA through a company called SportVU, which installed, I believe it was, six cameras in the arena, the rafters of the arena, at 24 frames a second, where we could track the XY coordinates of every player, the ball and the referees. And now they can do the XYZ coordinates with the latest technology, which is pretty cool. And so we would spend just quite a bit of time in those early Suns days, not dissimilar to what we did at Baylor, where it’s like, okay, we have our hands on all this data, now let’s build something. And the optical tracking data could produce really cool new metrics. Like, okay, let’s measure how far the screen defender is from the screener, and does that matter if our center is 6ft behind the screen versus 2ft behind the screen? Why does this question matter? Well, at that time, if you’re trying to invite the mid range shot and take away threes, which was the popular style of defensive play back then as teams are shooting more threes, then you want to know, can my seven foot center play at the level of the screen? Does he need to play back? If we do play back, are they going to pull up? Is he going to contest? And there’s a whole kind of, like, chain of thought that goes into that. That’s really interesting. The role itself, though, it grew very quickly under James, and I’m really lucky that he trusted me as much as he did. And I eventually would go on to lead or manage every team within basketball operations outside of the players and the coaches directly. So health and performance for a year, which was athletic training, strength, conditioning, nutrition, sports science, those kinds of things. So keeping the players healthy, getting them stronger, helping them play better from a physical, athletic standpoint. Scouting, which is obvious, professional scouting, amateur scouting, so college basketball. Data science. The salary cap side of things as well, which is super interesting. Kind of ran the whole gamut there. And then eventually my last year ran operations. Yeah. Which was the true day to day of being in it.
Jimmy Soni
So I want to dive in, because, and we’ll link to it in the show notes, but there was this really interesting interview you did about sports and analytics and AI, and you talk a little bit about what happened when data first arrived at the NBA, where you finally have optical tracking data. And then, as I understand it, a company came around and built dashboards. And for the first time, I guess, in the league’s history, this data that, you know, would have had to be cobbled together and, you know, hacked together before is now easily visible to teams. Talk a little bit about that moment, what happened, and kind of what you saw as that happened.
Ryan Resch
Yeah. When SportVU came in and they introduced optical tracking data, it delivered as all nascent forms of data deliver, which is, you know, structured to some degree. But you need to know how to write SQL and you need to know how to write Python or R at a base in order to actually interact with these numbers and make them mean anything of relevance.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And, you know, around the mid 2010s too, in the data science community, the tech community, machine learning is really starting to take off. So Facebook algorithms, AlexNet, mentioned previously. You know, it’s insane to talk about it now like, AlphaGo. Right? Like, the things that would then go on to truly change the world are coming into the public conscious. And a company called Second Spectrum, and they did a great job with it. They solved the problem of needing to have technical coding chops to interact with this optical tracking data by building machine learning algorithms to track the actions of these coordinates. So instead of me having to now figure out, okay, a middle pick and roll occurred at 7 minutes and 15 seconds in the second quarter by our players, Second Spectrum built the algorithms, the machine learning algorithms, to actually identify this. And then from there we could split that and filter it into a host of different metrics, whether it’s on the left side of the court, the right side of the court. Basically you’re able to summarize and assess the game at a much more granular level. And they tied film to it. So that was also a huge innovative side of it that again goes towards solving the communication problem. So now coach sees, my middle pick and roll is 1.20 points per possession. And then here’s the 30 clips of our guys doing it. You can reinforce, okay, why is it 1.2? Let’s watch the film to find out.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And super helpful. Yeah. Extremely useful. Very advantageous when you are one of the few teams that has it. But as with all things, it becomes democratized and everybody has access to this data and this information. And something that started happening my last few years in the league was this constant conversation around, is everyone playing the same way? Is there a homogenous style of play?
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Is everyone running middle pick and roll, trying to shoot threes and either switching ball screens or playing in the deep drop on ball screens? Where is the innovation in our style of play?
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And I think it’s a fascinating conversation.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And there’s been some studies that say it is happening, some studies that say it isn’t happening. This is one of those topics where, if people are talking about it, if the perception is that it’s happening, then it’s probably important to figure out why that perception exists. Yeah. And it occurred to me one day that we really did all have access to similar data. Right? The same data.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And, you know, you think a program would get, you know, ridiculed if they didn’t shoot, you know, 30, 35, 40 threes. You know, your coach doesn’t have good shot selection, blah, blah. What kind of behavior does that drive?
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
That the coach now is like, okay, what does the data say I should do?
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
But if you’re basing it off of just what a dashboard says, you’re looking at lagging indicators. You’re looking at what others are doing to win.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
You’re not drilling down and saying, no, what is it for our team? Back to that two by two. What is it for our team’s context, for how we win? And so when you have this kind of democratized dashboard, instead of proprietary questions, proprietary data, or proprietary metrics built on publicly available data, right, is really the way to do it. With the optical tracking data, you do end up in this kind of path dependency. Okay, middle pick and roll seems to be the most efficient action.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Switching ball screens is extremely efficient as well. And then it’s kind of this race toward some kind of false optimization, in a way.
Jimmy Soni
The opposite problem is what many people read in the Moneyball book, right? So on the one end of the spectrum, you’d be like, data is useless. Right? That’s over and done with. Most team owners at this point are going to emphasize the numbers. Right? Now you go to the other place where, because the numbers are the same numbers everybody else is looking at, you get, like, a homogenized style of play, right? Or you’re all doing the same things because the numbers suggest the same things. So that’s an interesting thing to square, whether you’re a GM or a coach, to say to yourself, okay, how do I make sure I’m not captive to the metrics that everybody else is benchmarking against? How did you think about that internally? Like, how did you make the most use of the dashboards that, you know, a company provided, while not then allowing it to drive the same conclusions that everybody else is going to draw, so that you’re basically playing the same game as everybody else?
Ryan Resch
I think it follows a path of what you kind of described, where the information that’s readily available is great for education. It’s great to tell you what is going on. It’s great to tell you what happened. It’s great to tell you, okay, under these conditions, this existed.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
It does not tell you moving forward, if we face those conditions again, will this outcome still occur? And I think if I could go back, then I would probably emphasize this point stronger with the analytics team, and I would have us just spend more time asking better questions to get us back into the mindset of XY coordinates. How do we build the model that shows whether our center should be 6ft or 2ft or 5ft? Can we get that on what’s available? Yes, but this is different because of how we teach our defense. Like, if we are able to define our shift defense, our help line defense, and we know where these guys are supposed to stand, then we should also be able to code out that logic and get those metrics that are more Suns proprietary or more team proprietary than just taking what is available on the dashboard. Because they don’t know our defense. Right? Nor should they.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And in this, again, it comes back to, I think, like, data is not a holy grail. Like, it is not a panacea for all of this stuff. It is another area where you can find competitive advantage if you know how to use it, just like any other tool. As cliche as that argument is, yes, it is a tool. Yeah, you know how to use it, then you can find advantage with it. And if you do talk to these leagues where it has become kind of more pervasive, like baseball, for example, it’s really hard to find the next differentiation lane of data in baseball, because there’s been 20 years, tons of money, and you’ve had an owner class in Major League Baseball that comes from these more rational worlds that use data in their private equity shops or whatever they’re doing in their business life. And so they almost, like, optimize it to the point where if you don’t have it at an A plus level to begin with, like, you’re just behind. Right? You’re not even talking about eking out advantage at that point. You’re just like, we have... It’s a model that I would use at the Suns, was like, what is the negligence line? Like, if we are below this negligence line, then we must focus everything on getting above it. And if we are above it, now we can start talking about, okay, what are the cool, unique ways that we can differentiate ourselves from this? So you think about, let’s say if we talk about basketball, for example, style of play. So style of play is just literally, how are you going to play offense? How are you going to play defense? What are you going to focus on? Basketball, at the end of the day, just like all sports, is a possession game. You want as many shots on goal as you can get. Field goal attempts plus free throw attempts, you want that number to be higher than your opponent, not in a reckless way. Like, don’t cross half court and just throw the ball up, unless you’re Steph Curry. But you want to just maximize that number. Yeah. So what are the ways to do that? Well, rebounding is one of those ways, and turnovers is one of those ways as well. So either you don’t turn it over, you get your opponent to turn it over, or you grab the ball offensively and defensively, so your opponent cannot grab the ball. It’s really that simple. If you don’t have rebounding and turnovers dialed in, like, if you’re not top 15 in those areas, negligence line would say, focus on that. Focus on defensive rebounding and how you’re going to get better from a roster perspective, from a coaching perspective, from a front office perspective, culturally. How are we going to become a better rebounding team?
Jimmy Soni
Interesting.
Ryan Resch
Before you try to be like, let’s get cute by shooting more threes, like this.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
You have to get above the negligence line for your style of play. And so I think that is kind of a helpful model to think about all of these things being tools. When do we start making strategic choices that genuinely differentiate us instead of just having fun with...
Jimmy Soni
Right. Fun with the data.
Ryan Resch
Yeah, exactly.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. And did you find that, in a way, what you’re describing is the opposite of what the fiercest critics about data in sports would have said, which is, they’re like, it’s going to make the game boring. It’s going to get the game over to eggheads. It’s going to be, you know, bean counters making all the decisions. What you’re actually saying is, no, like, the more information you have, if you’re a bad team, you’re going to lapse into homogeneity anyway. Right? But actually having more information gives you an ability to tailor your particular style of play to your particular opponent or to the group you have. And there’s room for a ton of innovation, even when every movement they’re making has been dissected to the nines.
Ryan Resch
That’s what I believe.
Jimmy Soni
Okay.
Ryan Resch
And I think that is, you know, if humans are just modeling the behavior of other people, at the end of the day, like, teams do the same thing. Programs, institutions, they all do the same thing. So Golden State is going to win all these championships. How do we play more like Golden State? How do we get smaller? Because they’re playing small ball.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Well, one of the most important factors of their small ball is they have Draymond Green, who is arguably the smartest defensive player in NBA history. Like, someone who just redefined what it meant to be a small ball center.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And if you don’t have Draymond Green, probably not the path for you to go down. Right? And so, again, if we return to this, like, negligence line model. Basketball is played in a vertical plane. The scoring goal is 10ft above the ground. It’s not like soccer, where it’s, like, low to the ground, you can kick the ball in there. Height and size and jumping ability will always have some level of advantage. So you can’t build a small team in pursuit of playing small ball.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
You’re below the negligence line here. Unless you have that defining factor, a Draymond Green type person. And it is exactly what you said, where it’s, okay, if we can get all of this information, as soon as we establish our floor and our foundation. Again, it goes back to James’s model of raising the floor.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
If we can establish a really high floor here where all of our fundamentals are taken care of. The best coaches will preach fundamentals. Read any John Wooden quote out there. He’s only talking about fundamentals and, like, first principles. Like, you see this in the best tech founders, all of this.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Where it is this, like, set the floor really high.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Get it there. And then you can start, like, branching off and doing these things. Where you have Steph Curry, who is fundamentally the greatest shooter of all time.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
You have Draymond in his role, Klay in his role, Andre Iguodala in his role.
Jimmy Soni
Okay.
Ryan Resch
Now we can start, you know, bringing in these people who can differentiate from there. Or these styles that can differentiate.
Jimmy Soni
So you transitioned at some point from the Suns to your role now in private equity. Walk us through kind of that latest iteration in your career.
Ryan Resch
Like you asked earlier about an ownership change. Yeah. And I like to joke that my NBA bingo card was full except for winning a championship, which is the worst part.
Jimmy Soni
You got to the championship.
Ryan Resch
We got to the Finals. We did lose, unfortunately. And I did go through an ownership change as well. And part of that ownership change, I got to meet Justin Ishbia, who is the founder of Shore Capital Partners. And I spent a lot of time with Justin and with Shore from 2023, when he and his brother bought the team, his brother Mat bought the team, through May of 25, when I did leave Phoenix. And I came to just really appreciate how Shore was built and how Shore was operating. Extremely process driven, very data heavy, very much a sports culture.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
In that sports are very much a part of what they’re doing day to day. And I learned so much from them in such a short period of time. Nine years in the NBA is a lifetime. We had done the whole, you know, start from the bottom, get to the top line again. I think one of the through lines of my career has been, like, incessant problem solving. So it is like, just solve the next problem in front of you. And I just wanted a new problem. Like, I wanted a new challenge. And I was very fortunate that Justin gave me an opportunity to join Shore for a year and then recently moving over into 1949 Capital, which is also part of Justin’s world. And it’s been a fascinating look at the difference between the zero sum nature of sports.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And the non zero sum nature of everything else.
Jimmy Soni
Right. And that’s exactly what I was going to ask you, which is, in your prior world, there are winners and there are losers, there are wins and losses. And now you’re in a world, private equity, where there’s still winners and losers, but it’s not zero sum. There are partnerships to be made, there are deals to be made. How have you thought about that transition from one to the other?
Ryan Resch
I would tell you that I miss the games. Yeah. In the sense of, there’s nothing quite like being a part of a winning team in sports. Like, the ride of that.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
The opposite is also true. It’s extremely hard to be part of a losing team. Right. But what I have really enjoyed about kind of the non zero sum world is what you mentioned, which is, like, you get to finally live out what game theory would tell you, which is cooperation will oftentimes lead to the best outcome.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And you get to take these lessons from sport about team building, about setting and raising the floor, about how do different personalities work with each other in the best way, and try to form those partnerships and get the most and the best out of, like, the unit instead of just the individual person. And I’m also very fortunate that, you know, Shore and Justin are very data driven and very AI focused as well. And so the overlap has been that Shore and Justin, in that environment, is very data heavy. Yeah. And very AI forward, I would say, for sure. Shore started an AI team very early. I think it was early 2025 that they started hiring AI specific people to go into the portfolio companies and implement these solutions, which is incredible to think about how early that was. And it was having the opportunity to go to an environment that is that forward looking.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
That excited me. And helping them roll out a lot of their AI enterprise tools over the last year has been an unbelievable learning experience. Like, tech deployments are one thing, but rolling out frontier models to an entire private equity firm is a whole nother beast. And learned a ton there and have since gone deeper on the AI space and the sports space.
Jimmy Soni
And, you know, there’s that line, like, prediction is always hard, especially about the future. But I’m curious what you make of AI as it has been adopted in sports. Like, where are we at? Are we early innings? Is it far enough along? Because a lot of the things you’re talking about with, like, sabermetrics and all this, did that pave the way for AI use? Is it still kind of where the rest of the world is, which is, we’re figuring ourselves out in this moment? Right? Like, what is the interaction or intersection between sports and AI in 2026?
Ryan Resch
From what I’ve seen, absolutely early innings and absolutely still in this formation of, where are we? Like, what exactly is the impact that this is going to have? So, not dissimilar to what is going on in every other industry. And I think when you zoom back out and you say, okay, who is using AI the best? What can we learn from them? At least in my experience, it’s been, if you think about AI transformation as operations transformation. So operations being, how do we take this unbelievable amount of information that we are receiving, synthesize it and then make a decision on it?
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And that can happen at a very small level, such as, how are you going to stock the snack bar at your office? All the way up to a very, very high level of, where are we going to move this capital so that we can invest it? If you think about it in that way, then you can start to identify places where having this, I don’t want to call it a logic machine, but this ability to extract structure and synthesize information and pattern match at a scale that we have just never seen. Once you can start finding, like, the links in your chain of operations, be like, okay, this looks like data extraction for the snack room, because we need to have a better sense of how much money we’re spending on whatever, you know, yogurt or whatever, structured in that way. And then AI can help you there. I think that sports is still trying to figure out what that operations chain looks like.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And do I think that there are coders out there who are using Codex and Claude Code?
Jimmy Soni
Of course.
Ryan Resch
And they absolutely should be doing that. How do we now take that capacity and get us back to getting our hands deep in that raw optical tracking data so that we can build new novel metrics, so that we can just answer more novel questions? Like, my whole thing on tanking, where, you know, I think that there is probably a paper waiting to be written by someone who can examine, you know, the kind of perverse incentives of tanking as well. Where, if you were only considering it from the perspective of the general manager trying to acquire an All-Star, yeah, sure, you might have found, like, an equilibrium there. When you consider it from the perspective of players and coaches and owners who need to look good in the community, yeah, maybe it’s a very different calculus. There’s not enough time or attention within a sports team to do that because it moves so fast, because we are on a clock. Every year it restarts. But now that you have AI, like, a good ownership group should be asking, okay, you think that we should tank? Model that for me.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Like, actually run through all of the different scenarios of where this could go well and where this could go wrong. All the way down to, when you think that we’re going to be contending for the number one pick, who’s in that class? And are they Victor Wembanyama roles of generational talent?
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
Because that is a different proposition than, you know, if you’re just some kind of run of the mill class.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
But my hope is that is where AI and sports will get back to, is now that we have the ability at a much lower cost to ask these deeper questions instead of just trying to win the game in front of us. Yeah. We can just produce more novel insights and more interesting ideas.
Jimmy Soni
It’s one thing to be in the front office and doing this. One of the things that AI has done is it’s democratized the ability to ask these questions without knowing how to code in Python or in R or whatever. Do you think that we’re going to see the first generation of players who dive into their own data or into sports data to understand the game?
Ryan Resch
You know, it’s funny, we traded for Chris Paul.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And he was a heavy user of Second Spectrum. And I was very impressed by that when I saw that. And it makes sense when you think about how Chris plays. And I have an immense amount of respect for him. He was incredible for us. And some of the best players, you think about James and his career, these players understand themselves. They understand truly their strengths and their weaknesses and they understand what to focus on in practice, what to focus on in warmups. It is very dialed in to a degree that it teaches you the importance of specificity and detail when you watch how these best guys work. And data can help them with that. Yeah, it absolutely can help them with that. Where it’s not, you know, it’s not so much, okay, the front office may use it against me in contract negotiations.
Jimmy Soni
Or somebody’s forcing somebody, like, Ryan, kid Ryan shows up with his glasses and whatever, he’s got his spreadsheet and he’s got his clipboard that has nothing on it, but we let him hang out at the game. He’s telling me something about my spacing when I’m doing a screen. This is like the, you know...
Ryan Resch
Yeah.
Jimmy Soni
It’s more that the player could own this conversation.
Ryan Resch
Exactly. I think that’s what, if we’re moving toward kind of this democratization of information and intelligence, then I hope that is where it goes.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Is where the players really understand how they can benefit from it.
Jimmy Soni
Right. So if we take ourselves outside of the work context, and, you know, I want to be respectful of your time, want to wrap up. When you’re thinking about AI right now, what have you personally been most impressed by? Right? Because you came of age in a profession and in day to day work where you were taking huge amounts of data and trying to wring insights out of them. So what’s most exciting to you, or what tools do you use? What’s your day to day interaction with AI like?
Ryan Resch
I don’t know if this will be an exciting answer, but I think the thing that I am most interested in right now is using these coding agents with my workspace. Workspace I would have previously called a working directory.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Someone can call it a repo, whatever they want to call it. But having my workspace now be designed not for me to read.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
But for agents to read, for agents to navigate.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
It’s been such an interesting problem to solve. Okay, Ryan is not navigating this as much as he otherwise would have been, like an old Dropbox setup. Right? Ryan is building agents who need to read the work of the other agents, or what they’re producing and what they’re writing to this workspace. Yeah. And that is two very different things.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And I have torn it down, last month I think I’ve torn it down four times and rebuilt it. I have more copies of a working directory than I ever thought I would have. But I think that speaks to kind of the age that we’re entering also, which is you do have to change your perspective of how you used to approach work fundamentally.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
And I think it maybe makes me a better manager of people, to be honest, because you have to be so much more specific in what you’re looking for and asking for. Maybe not five years from now when these models are even better.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
But again, not an exciting answer. But I think, like, redesigning what your literal workspace digitally looks like.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Fascinating. And then day to day, it’s really become an operating system, where I love to write. So, yes, I will still open up Word or whatever, but I don’t really type my writing anymore. I will hand write writing, and then I will build, like, work product writing.
Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.
Ryan Resch
With Codex or with Claude Code or something like that.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
It’s very interesting where these worlds are diverging, where professionally I am living very much in these tools as an operating system, and in my personal life, going back to, like, this analog...
Jimmy Soni
The old school.
Ryan Resch
Yeah, back to the analog. Very interesting.
Jimmy Soni
I think that divergence is only going to become sharper. Right? I think it’s going to be, you have this world that you step into that’s almost quasi like the Matrix. But unlike the Matrix, you can pull the cord out of the back.
Ryan Resch
Exactly.
Jimmy Soni
And you do daily, because it’s the only way to stay sane.
Ryan Resch
Yeah.
Jimmy Soni
Right? It’s the reason, we talked about this a little bit earlier, before we were recording, but it’s the reason live events, like the premium on live events, is going to go up. I think it’s ironically the race to the new in AI is going to race many people back to the old. Right? And, like, the things that may have been under indexed in the social media era, I think, because of AI, are going to be over indexed in the next wave. Because I think what’s going to happen, you’re going to be too digitally plugged in. And the relief that you feel when you’re not... Right? The relief I feel now when I read a book, it only rivals what it felt like to read as a kid. And I think that’s entirely because so much of my day is spent in different AI modes that reading a book feels like Christmas. Like, it’s incredible to have the analog experience again.
Ryan Resch
I completely agree with that. I mean, I’m sitting here wearing a $20 Casio watch from Amazon because I did not want a smartwatch. Right? I did not want to wear it and be constantly hooked into these AI tools. Yeah. And it’s interesting because I think I could not have vocalized this in sport, but I can vocalize it now, which is, I love any work where you have to perform. Sports is that, where there’s a performance every night. Hospitality, restaurants, hotels, you have to be on. You have to perform. Broadway, here in New York, where we’re recording this, you have to be on. And I think that element of, someone is going to rehearse, rehearse, practice, practice, and then the curtain is going to go up, the ball is going to go up, the restaurant’s going to open. What an unbelievable thrill that was going to be for, I mean, for people to attend it, to see it, to see that level of talent, but then also to do it, do that work. I don’t think I could have explained that when I was in sports, but I feel that way now.
Jimmy Soni
Right. I think the premium on it goes up because fewer things will become unpredictable. My theory of the case would be that because you don’t know the outcome of how the night’s going to go in a show or how the game’s going to go. Yes. And I can give you very good predictions about most everything else.
Ryan Resch
Right.
Jimmy Soni
Like, it’s going to work from the available set of human data and restrictions and come back with an answer. The sheer unpredictability of some of these things is what’s going to drive the desire for them. Right?
Ryan Resch
Yeah.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
Randomness is good for us. Right? It turns out.
Jimmy Soni
Right. Exactly. What are some of the, and I promise we’ll finish here, but because we could do this for another three hours, this is basically like what we would do anyway. What are some of the books or podcasts or kind of other media or intellectual influences that this year have helped you, particularly as you’ve made the transition from out of sports to private equity?
Ryan Resch
I read a lot, so I absolutely love to read. Like you, whenever I am reading, I am extremely happy. From a fiction perspective, a mutual... Tyler, a mutual friend of ours, recommended on his website when Dan Simmons passed away, the Hyperion series. And so I did read Hyperion and then I am in the fourth book now, and it’s fascinating to read that, to go back and read some of the other science fiction classics and see how they talked about AI at that time. Deeply philosophical. Not an accident that Silicon Valley in the tech space right now has that slant and that bend to it as well. But I think that has helped me in a way contextualize, maybe societally, like, not so much where it’s going and, like, oh no, things are going to go so poorly, but where things are, like, culturally. Has been really interesting. I am still a huge fan of memoirs and biographies, as you know. So I gave your book out to many people at the Suns. Jimmy came and visited and saw stacks of The Founders. I would give out to the team. And I continue to find myself drawn to those stories more and more. I don’t know, I’m kind of processing this now as we’re talking about it, but I think it’s like reading these stories of these people who accomplished such unbelievable things pre AI.
Jimmy Soni
Pre AI.
Ryan Resch
Yeah. Like, how did they think about these problems before we had the ability to, like, drill down or synthesize all of these random things? Like, how did Steve Jobs approach that? How did, you know, past presidents, how did historical figures solve their problems in an era where it was just much more difficult to see the board clearly with the information that you had access to?
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
What I do really enjoy is the podcast and the media landscape that this industry has birthed, with shows like TBPN. Yeah. And just how much fun people are on space. Or even things like the Dwarkesh podcast, where it’s, no, we’re going to go super deep on these... Kind of 10 years ago we’d have been like, what are we all talking about? But now that we have direct application to KV caches in our life, like, I do want to watch a whiteboard session.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
It’s at the point now where I wish I had two more hours in a day...
Jimmy Soni
Same.
Ryan Resch
So that I could read or listen to a show or any of that more.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. Because the issue is that a whole new category of media has opened up.
Ryan Resch
Exactly.
Jimmy Soni
And it’s so different from the media I had when I was growing up. And it’s so rich, it’s so protein rich, and I just don’t have the time.
Ryan Resch
I agree.
Jimmy Soni
And I do not know from where I will find the time.
Ryan Resch
Exactly right.
Jimmy Soni
And the truth is, it’s like, I don’t know if you felt this way, but I know people have their different opinions about AI. I have found it to be just the most exciting thing to me since I kind of, like, first got on a dial up Internet, to make sure my parents didn’t pick up the phone by accident, interrupt that phone signal so I could interrupt the Internet. It’s that exciting. Because I think, especially if you’re in any kind of creative space, or if you’re in any kind of space where there’s a lot of flux, like what you’re in, where things can go one way or they can go another, AI just, it opens up the universe of possible questions you could ask and begin thinking about in a way that I have never seen. Like, I find myself, what it’s done for me, in addition to, I think, making me a better manager, it’s also made me ask better questions now, because that is just good training for the LLMs. It’s good training for life.
Ryan Resch
I completely agree with all that. There is, like, a default optimism, I think, that I have on these things. Recognizing the risks that exist, obviously. But I think the story of humanity and society is one of progress. And, you know, when you really look back at all of the technological change and the progress and the way that we spoke about those things at the time, there are a lot of overlaps there. I just feel so lucky to be in this. You tell me, when I was, like you said, I consider myself lucky being probably the last generation of millennial that did experience the analog to digital shift. So I did have a CD player. Despite how young I look, I did have a CD player. I also remember Napster.
Jimmy Soni
Yep. Napster was, that was the whole ball game. Finding out ways to download those MP3 files.
Ryan Resch
iPod with the click wheel.
Jimmy Soni
Right.
Ryan Resch
God.
Jimmy Soni
Really dating ourselves here.
Ryan Resch
This is funny. I know.
Jimmy Soni
The funniest interactions I have on these is, I have an 11 year old and she doesn’t realize the digital bounty that she’s been given. Right? She has no idea. So I remember one day we were talking and we were, she was like, we were watching one of our shows we like, and she said, “Oh, let’s go to season two, episode three.” And I stopped in that moment. I said, “Do you know that when I was young and I wanted to watch a show like Sonic the Hedgehog, I had to wake up, like, every Saturday to make sure that I was in front of the TV when that show came on, otherwise I would miss it. You’re done. And you have the ability to just pick a season, episode. This is extraordinary.” And she looks at me and, perfectly seriously, with, like, true pity in her eyes, she goes, “That is so sad.” Like, felt deeply bad for me that the challenge of my life was not being able to pick the season and pick the episode.
Ryan Resch
Amazing. Next time you’ve got to show her how to record it using a VCR, but there has to be something on the VHS tape, so she has to erase that first, and then she has to record it.
Jimmy Soni
Oh my God, that is too funny. So one of the ways we like to finish out Infinite Loops is, Ryan, you’re emperor. You’re named Emperor for a Day. And you get to basically incept two ideas, messages, themes, concepts, quotes, into everyone’s mind in humanity. So they’ll wake up and have these two ideas in their head. What two ideas or thoughts would you want people to carry forward into their lives?
Ryan Resch
There was a quote in my office in Phoenix. I don’t know if he actually said or wrote it, but it is from Voltaire.
Jimmy Soni
Right. Voltaire gets a lot of credit for things he didn’t say.
Ryan Resch
But you know what? Like, good for him.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, right? Like, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” I mean, maybe that was Voltaire that said that.
Ryan Resch
Maybe he’s living big in the age of AI. And he allegedly said, “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” And I love that because it goes kind of like a core principle of mine, which is, just solve the next problem. Just solve the next problem. And if you do that, then you’ll win the game. Or you think about basketball, the defense is going to change. We’ll solve for that defense, because guess what? They’re going to change again. And then you’ve got to solve for that one, and then just keep solving.
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
Ryan Resch
And I think that it also goes back to the default optimism point, where it is, if we believe that we can solve these problems and we can get around this, we can get around the risks that these, you know, AI tools may or may not pose, for example, I think that would be one. And then the second, and again, it goes back to, I think, a realization that I’ve only had recently, which is try to do work that has to face some form of reality. And what I mean by that is, you’re an author, you write a ton. You have to publish. At some point, you have to stop editing and send that book out so that I can read it and give it to my team. That is facing reality. Sports is that. Every single night, zero sum, someone’s going to win, someone’s going to lose. What we talked about earlier with the restaurant or the Broadway show, like, let people experience the work that you’re creating. Have the confidence for that so that you can get the feedback from it. But also what you’ll find is, when you find your work and when you find your people to do this work, it is so unbelievably fulfilling to do that thing together with those people, to put that thing out into the world, to actually change something or to introduce something to society. I think that’s so fulfilling, and it’s probably why I like reading biographies and memoirs.
Jimmy Soni
That’s a wonderful place to end it. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on Infinite Loops.
Ryan Resch
Thank you.
