YouSaid · the spoken record

Jon Wertheim

lines on the record: 56
first: 2019-06-17
most recent: 2019-06-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And try and find a better job. And it's remarkable how often standing on the sidelines might have been the better course of action.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Resist action bias. I mean, sometimes Doing nothing, sort of the Warren Buffett investment model, but I think it applies to a lot more than investing. I mean, sometimes doing nothing. Sometimes firing, you know, switching jobs. I mean, sometimes the grass isn't always greener. And I've seen a lot of coworkers leave for other jobs and then wish they hadn't done it. And I've seen people leave spouses and realize in retrospect that wasn't so wise. And just smaller everyday occurrences too, right? I mean, I bought a bike, I didn't like it, I sold the bike, and boy, I wish I hadn't sold the bike. So I think we have a bias in investing. We have a bias in life. We have a bias in a lot of our decision-making to just do something. You ever hear the med school, one of the great, don't just do something, stand there? I think too seldom. And I've learned this the hard way and I've witnessed other people learning this the hard way too seldom do we just stand there. We always feel like we need to get in there and try and time the market or get in there.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think like what you do. When I worked in a law firm and sort of reported home and said, yeah, I don't see myself being a lawyer for the next 40 years. All right, well, what do you see yourself doing? I don't know. I'll figure it out, but not that. It wasn't met with great resistance. I mean, I was lucky to have a father in particular who really liked his job. And he spent a lot of time at work. And you spend a lot of time. I mean, 40 hours is a myth. Your job is a big part of your identity and your day and just as a sheer math exercise, the waking hours you spend, the notion of having a job that you're not challenged by and passionate about is something really sort of scary and baffling to me. And whether it was implicitly or explicitly this idea of just do something you like was something I'm really grateful to have received.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next book's about the summer of 1984 in sports, when a lot of crazy things happened in retrospect that didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but from Jordan getting drafted to Lakers Celtics to Donald Trump buying a football team and then seeing a leak go to waste to a profitable Olympics. A lot happened in this 90-day window that seemed pretty normal when you and I were young teenagers but that still echo today. So it's a fun.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing about media today is that it really doesn't stop. I really love writing. I guess I'd say writing. I mean, I'm working on a book now, and it's almost like friends that'll play golf or... Do crossword puzzles. This doesn't seem like a job. I mean, it's just something I enjoy. I would do it on a beach. I would do it when I have an hour on Sunday morning and the kids are still asleep. I still really enjoy writing. The notion of doing something you don't like is just baffling and horrifying to me. So honestly, I come to work and I rather enjoy it and I go home and I deal with work stuff and it never really seems like work”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think at some level, respect being confronted and having a real conversation. And the athlete media relationship is very strange. It was when I started. It's probably more so today. But if you can just have a normal conversation, I think that goes a long way. Instead of the fawning Ted great game, can you talk about that play in the third period? I mean, that's... Not going to yield much of a rapport.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I said, well, I wasn't there. Could I ask you again? Can you give me some thoughts on your new owner? I just was hoping to ask you a few questions about new ownership. And he said something impolite to the effect of, are you deaf? I just told you. I said all I was going to say is spring training. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm too old for this shit. I'm never going to cover this team again. I'm just trying to do this goddamn story on the owner, who, by the way, was lovely and agreed to talk. So it wasn't anything great expose. And I sort of said to Marlon Bird, look, I hear what you're saying, but you don't have to be an asshole about it. And he said, yeah, I'm sorry. I just sometimes I just get asked so many questions. I'm sorry. What can I do? Let's talk about it. And he ended up having a nice conversation with a guy. There's the cheesy high school, you know, the after school special message. Stand up to the bully. But at the end of the day, what you realize is that this is a lot of times about a connection and these athletes.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll give you a good one with taught me something too. So I'm doing a story on Tom Ricketts who became the owner of the Chicago Cubs. This was maybe 2009 or so. And I interviewed Marlon Byrd and said, I'm just doing a story. I'm curious your thoughts of your new owner. The guy glared at me. I kind of sort of knew who Marlon Byrd was. I don't seem like I'm sitting there in the clubhouse. I said, is there a problem? He said, well, I talked about this. I said all I wanted to say in spring training.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing it with two cameras and you can interrupt me and I can interrupt you and we have a great conversation. If we're doing this for TV and we're talking over each other, that's not good TV.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did an interview a few years ago for 60 minute sports show, which is how I started here at 60 Minutes with Marshawn Lynch. And I was sort of warned in advance that this guy's a little bit different and he doesn't like to give interviews. And I went through the transcript when I was done and I realized that, again, when I just sort of sat there, It yielded the best material and it was a TV interview so you don't want to interrupt the other person you really want Them to speak and say what you want them to say and sort of let it be their interview. That interview and reading that transcript was really, I mean, again, this came 20 years into my career. I mean, these interviews are tricky, and it's much trickier when...”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting, you're smiling when you walk away. With TV where the interview is at least at 60 minutes, the interview is part of the package. It's a different rhythm. You don't want to interrupt. You don't want to overtalk. You're much less interested in something that it's a completely different rhythm to the interview. So I would differentiate between a print interview and a TV interview, but something that's taken me way too long to learn is that sometimes less is more. And a simple question and letting the subject fill any silence. Trying to prove that you belong to be at the table.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm allowing the space to fill. No, sometimes allowing space to fill and let the person you're interviewing fill that vacuum. I think there's a temptation not just with interviewing, but you want to sort of go in there and build rapport and connect with the subject and show them how much research you've done and how smart you are. Sometimes the simplest questions and then just listening to the answer and not jumping into your next bit of dialogue yields the best responses. But one thing that's been interesting to me that I've realized is that there's a big difference between a print interview and a TV interview. And that for print, a lot of times you want good quotes, you want to be able to paint a portrait of the subject you're interviewing, but no one's listening to your interview, right? So you could have a horrible conversation for 29 minutes. And if the 30th minute the subject opens up or gives you a couple of nuggets that are in.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an ongoing process. No one has mastered the gross, perhaps being an exception. I mean, no one's really mastered the art of interviews. Everyone is different, but I think sometimes the most brief questions. The longest listening yield the best answers?”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The rules haven't changed much. In some ways there's real continuity to sports. And in other ways they're unrecognizable.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gold State Warriors are now worth probably an excess of $4 billion. That's 10x what the owners paid for it not that long ago. Some of that is a success of the team. Some of that is playing in San Francisco. They're moving to a new building, but a lot of that is the meteorites. And what happens when the media contracts that have propped up so much of sports and so much of these ancillary industries and the player salaries, when that changes and the networks don't have the subscriber fees? And I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how that changes the business of sport. It's funny because in some ways games are games and the beautiful thing about sport is there's a certain level of continuity, right? I mean, you could have been asleep for 20 years and watch baseball today and you might not notice the players, but with a few small exceptions, the teams are the teams and you still have an American league in a national.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll watch it when I watch it. I'll watch it on the treadmill. I'll binge it with my kids. I mean, nobody sports conversely, you want to be there. I mean, the experience, the beauty of it was watching this unscripted act play out live. It's going to be interesting to see, I mean, sports has been propped up to a great degree by these media rights and these media contracts when that model changes and we're not all paying for cable and when ESPN doesn't necessarily make the billions it does from subscriber fees and therefore doesn't have the billions of dollars to throw at the leagues who therefore don't have the 51% they're going to have to pay for the players or whatever the revenue split is in their sport. I think that's going to change. But sports have really exploded. I did a story for 60 minutes last week on the Warriors and this is a franchise and the Golden State Warriors not that long ago was just a brutal just a dog shit franchise.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“exploded in the 20 years or so I've done this, a lot of that is based on technology and media and the fact that there's still an appetite for live unscripted programming. And there are TV shows that I love and watch and I can't even tell you what network they're on.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think people are going to lose a lot of money based. I mean, this will be very familiar to you. People that place bets based on emotion are going to get burned. I think we're going to have a lot of conspiracy theories. I think there are going to be very few winners. And I think like investing in general, I think there are going to be winners that are going to emerge and they're going to be models that are going to prove successful over the long term. And I think this is going to be divided into a very, very small subset of people that are doing this with discipline and research and responsibly. And the Floyd Mayweathers who wake up feeling like Duke's going to win the NCA tournament. So I'm just going to throw money on Duke. But it's going to be fascinating to watch.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way we consume sports, but I also think the data and what all of these billions and billions of data points coming out of sports gambling, what they're going to say about human behavior are going to be fascinating.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, right now, I know people that were in Midtown Manhattan, and I know people that will drive across the George Washington Bridge, activate their William sports gambling app, play sports books, which you could geotag. So you can do this in New Jersey, and then they'll drive back across the bridge. I mean, I think that pretty soon we're going to be at a place where sports gambling in different iterations is going to be legal everywhere that we're not just betting on point spreads and whether the Patriots are going to beat the Jets, but we're going to be betting during the game. Are they running to the left side or the right side? Are they passing? Are they running? Is Steph Curry making this free throw missing it? I mean, I think this is going to be everywhere very soon. It's all going to be mobile. And I think it's really going to change. I go pretty libertarian on this. I don't have any real moral issue with it, but I think, A, it's really going to change the way.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The stakes are a little different in that financial price versus these self-esteem issues. But yeah, I mean, it's always about more than, I think one thing that's going to be really interesting that's very much in the space that we're talking about is this idea of sports gambling that is proliferating and has really moved in from the margins. I mean, if someone said, what are some of the biggest changes since you've covered sports? Social media and the internet is the first one. But I would put this very, very changing. I would say evolving views on sports gambling as another significant change, but I think this sports gambling, when it's not just I love the pirates, but I have money on this game, I'm not rooting because I admire Steph Curry. I'm rooting because I have a financial stake in the outcome. I think, A, that's really going to change the fan experience and this team athlete fan relationship we're talking about. But I also think the data that's going to come out of this is going to be really fascinating. And I think some of these behavioral biases we're talking about.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I should also pause to acknowledge my collaborators in both of these books that I should have done earlier. Toby Moskowitz, who's a childhood friend of mine now at Yale and also at AQR hedge fund. In Greenwich, was my co-author on scorecasting and your brain on sports was written by Sam Summers and other great guy from the Midwest, who's a professor of psychology at Tufts. Yeah, we invest a lot of ourselves in this idea of being a fan. And some of that is these are our warriors and they represent our schools and our values. And we make a statement about ourselves. But also their real pragmatic functional material ways that rooting affects the way we lead our lives. And there are a number of studies that people have more confidence in their ability to do tasks when their team wins versus when they lose. I mean, there are all sorts of ways in which our identity”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. You miss the Amazon IPO. That ultimately is going to cost a lot more money, but that's an omission, right? That's an error of not doing it. Somehow that is less culpable. So we see this with coaches. We see this with decision making on going forward on fourth down. Somehow this idea of making a mistake by error of omission, right? I think in the book we use the example of the official that doesn't call goaltending on the last play of the game. That is preferable to imagine calling goaltending and then having the camera show that it really wasn't. That's a much more grievous error. And I think loss aversion and omission bias are two things that in investing and also in sports have us making some really suboptimal choices. But like shooting overhand free throws, at least we're on the right side of convention.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On its own, right? Because I think there's sort of an element of machismo and image tied to that and what underhand represents. I mean, I think that's an interesting example. But what would you rather do? Shoot 68% conventionally and 72% but be known as the underhanded free throw shooter. We see that in investing as well. There's a risk reward threshold that we all consider when we make investing decisions as well. I mean something we talked about that I wonder, I mean it's sort of the same conversation is just this notion of omission bias and this idea that somehow if we make a mistake by removing ourselves from a situation that somehow becomes less culpable than if we affirmatively make a mistake. So let's give you an example. If you're a fund manager and you put your client's money in an airline stock that goes down 20%, that's a really, really bad mistake. If you miss an IPO,”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At some level, that folds into loss aversion as well. And this idea that we hate the prospect of loss more than we like, the prospect of gain, I think some of sports we just have this conventional wisdom that also is wrapped up in job preservation. So the real goal for some of the decision makers, including the managers and the coaches, is keeping their job. Well, there's no quicker way of losing games is the quickest way to lose your job. But the next way is to make boneheaded decisions or to be considered a cowboy. So that really, I think, stifles creativity and decision making. And so a lot of times in sports you end up with decisions being made that actually don't maximize your chances of winning, but what they maximize is your chance of keeping a job. So if you're the free throw shooter and you shoot 68, I mean, the free throw shooting is an interesting thing.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Morgan Stanley, all rights reserved. And now back to the show. I want to talk a little bit about some of the things you've written about in your books that really do cross over to investing. And one of them starts with this concept of sports or the difference between popular decisions and smart decisions.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wonder if something about the three pointer is that you and I can do it. I can have a shooting con. I mean, I've shot from half court before and I can go out there with my son and we can see who can make Most shots from 25 feet. We're not having dunk contests. I think baseball has a number of problems that go beyond home runs and strikeouts, pacing in time of game and demography. But no, it's interesting. I mean, I think you're right. What do we think about when we think about basketball? The dunk is the pinnacle moment and everyone cheers for a dunk and that's what they show on the highlight show strikeout versus home run seems to be a less sexy proposition.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also wonder about the relationship of the fan in the game, because in basketball, if you're having outside shots and dunks, it's pretty exciting to watch. If you change that over to baseball, it's home runs and strikeouts, and that's pretty boring to watch.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A single three-point shot. So is the data breeding this new player that is unlike us working on their getting on a nine-foot hoop and trying to dunk, but instead you take farther and farther shots and you see kids at the gym and they're shooting from half court because that's how Steph does. Is the data changing the way players play or is this sort of Steph Curry mold encouraging us to examine the data of shooting from farther away?”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, what we see in the NBA now between James Harden's shot statistics and between Curry and exactly a guy takes a step back, 37 footer at the buzzer who's a point guard, by the way. I mean, this is a guy who's in another generation, what does he do? He penetrates and then he either dishes or takes it himself. But no, I never thought we would be debating on whether a step back 37-foot shot at the buzzer when you've got 10 seconds left to set up a play would be considered good or bad. My question, I don't know the answer. Have people said, listen, the data says more and more threes these mid-range jump shots are worthless. It's a dunk or a three-pointer. We need more perimeter game. Has that led to this value we put on the three and Steph Curry and Harden and having no problem? I mean, I'm doing a story next week on a college player that averages about 11 three-point attempts a game. Larry Byrd, great shooting Larry Bird. He would go games and games without attempting.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know what's interesting to me is sort of the chicken and egg of it. I mean, when we were kids, what did everybody do? You go, you try to be Michael Jordan and you try to dunk. And if a guy was 6'6 and athletic, inevitably he was the next Jordan, and those were the players that got drafted. Then it became more about the centers. And now we're back to this era of shooting. And I think this era is driven by analytics, by, yeah, a three-point shot that you shoot at 38% is a better shot than the two-pointer you shot at 44%.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basketball, and you mentioned earlier, the way the game of basketball has changed through, I guess, data is amazing. Like you're watching the playoffs and these guys are taking three-point shots from who knows how far behind the arc. What's your sense of where basketball is going?”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I saw, yeah, yeah. Which is kind of amazing. Yeah, this is all hearsay, but apparently Obama read this book and said those guys lost me when they tell everyone that plays basketball knows there's some days when you're feeling it totally but you know expand that sample and those hot days figure into your overall pattern so again I mean a guy takes hundreds and hundreds of shots Steph Curry takes hundreds and hundreds of shots in the course of a season shoots 50% it doesn't mean mismake mismake mismake and he can have a hot hand he can feel it But is it that or is that just, again, think of coin flips and what the sequences are going to be for that? I mean, making eight shots in one day and feeling great and feeling like you can't miss still, I think doesn't disprove luck.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The hot hand phenomenon on it you'd written about it in scorecasting and just relatively recently there was sort of a very sophisticated mathematical study that showed indeed there is a very small statistical hot hand. I saw, yeah, yeah, which is kind of amazing because anyone who's played any sport feels like there are times where you feel like you can't miss a basketball shot and there are times you feel like you can't make it.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Too hot out or I ate bad sushi for lunch or I'm really feeling it. I had a good night's sleep. We don't like to think that, you know what, you flip a coin 600 times, you're going to have eight of one and none of the other. But luck, I think, plays a bigger role in sports and probably other aspects of our lives as well than maybe we like to lead on.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And says, Boy, I'm really struggling. I'm in a slump. I need to change my bat and not wash my socks. And you want to say, well, you hit 300 and you have 600 at bats a year. So you're getting 180 hits. At no point does it say those have to come one hit every third at bat. It's completely within coin flipping probability that you'll have eight heads before you have a tail. Stay at a roulette wheel all night and it's completely reasonable that you'll have four reds and it doesn't mean you're due for a black. So I think this idea of sort of seeing everything in terms of streaks and slumps and not in terms of individual isolated occurrences, it's something in sports, but in real life as well. And again, I think we really resist this idea of luck. We want to think that we control our destiny and there's a reason and an explanation.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, luck in some ways is really anathema to sports, right? We work hard and we game plan and we strategize and we compete and we sweat. We don't want to think that this is just in the hands of fate or coin flip. I mean, in some ways, luck is very much at odds with these core values of sports. And I think same with investing, right? We like to have an investment strategy. We like to do our research. We don't want to think that we're throwing. Starts at a dartboard, right? But luck plays a real role and people tend to fail to completely understand luck. And I think one of the things we wrote about in the book was this idea of slumps and hot hands and streaks and a baseball player goes 0 for eight.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, you mentioned scorecasting in the book I did subsequent to that Your Brain on Sports. I mean, there are different kinds of lessons, but no, I will never look at luck the same way. I will never, I don't know if you want to talk about loss aversion and let's walk through some of it.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You pick your tribe and it says something about you and you don't budge and you build a case for you and against the other guy with veteran adult. It's completely normal to like both of them. And I think one of the reasons that very early on they recognize that rivalry ultimately benefits both of them. And Nadal may deprive me of a few titles and Federer may deprive me of a few titles, but ultimately I'm better off for having this guy in my life. And they've shown that you can compete against someone and have a rival. You can compete fiercely. You can really, really want to beat that guy, but he doesn't have to be an enemy. But obviously he's taken on perhaps a significant amount of resonance lately where it doesn't seem like you have a lot of instances of that. But I think the fact that you can have this rivalry but also respect the guy, be friends with the guy, and even genuinely appreciate that he exists, that's something that stuck with me.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I guess it varies from book to book. Some books I've done for different reasons and sometimes I wrote a book about pool hustling, which probably has fewer lessons, or at least practically speaking, than scorecasting. The Feder Nadal book you mentioned has always stuck with me, especially now. I think it's especially resonant, that these guys, Roger Feder and Rafindahl, probably greatest rivalry in the history of men's tennis. They'll probably, if they retired tomorrow, would probably rank one two as the best players of all time. They're completely different. They came to tennis differently. They play differently. It's lefty. It's righty. It's Western Europe and Mallorca. I mean, they're a hundred contrasts, but at the end of the day, they're really a lot of similarities. And one of the rare rivalries where it seems totally normal to root for both of them. You wouldn't say I like Harvard and Yale or I think Macs and PCs are both awesome.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“covering sports in the law, it was always about more than the game. That sounds really trite. But no, I think early on doing this job, it was always about what can sports explain beyond what everyone can see reading a box score.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always liked sports, I was never a hard, hardcore sports fan. I mean, people are always disappointed when they come up to me and they hear what I do and they say who should be. Either fake it or just confess that I like sports, I don't live sports. To me, always what's interesting at sports is I think I told a boss, I like sports and so sports and economics, sports and the law, sports and psychology. So I think from the beginning, I never had to really cover a beat. So I was never the guy who went to 100 baseball games a year or only did the NFL I always was sort of a generalist and I always sort of tried to write and watch sports with a plus one and it was always more about the game and more than the athlete. I think I had the good fortune that I never had to be the NFL guy or the college football guy. So I think pretty early the games are interesting and sometimes they're very dramatic and sometimes they're not and the athletes can be very interesting and sometimes it can be very boring but really from the beginning I mean especially since I was sort of hired under this guise of”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try to learn from data and other players want nothing to do with it. And don't pollute my creative impulses by putting ideas on my head and I don't care if my opponent serves a certain way when their downbreak point and serves a different way when they're up game point. Some players really resist it and other players embrace it more. I think it's definitely a continuum with antennas.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This week, as we're recording this, and next week they'll be in Madrid and then Rome, and it's very hard to sort of standardize data. But I also think a lot of tennis is really hard to capture. If you serve 90% of your first serves, well, that's an extraordinarily high number. Ted must have been having a tremendous serving day. Or was Ted playing too conservatively and hitting the ball into the middle of the box and not taking chances and that ninety percent is misleading? So I think a lot of tennis data really depends on the framing and needs a little bit more context. And I think also there's so much that goes on in a tennis match that is emotional and mental. And it's about controlling moments and it's about someone in the crowd with a kazoo you want to shut up. I mean, there's so many factors that can impact a match that are really hard to account for. Some players studied, I mean, Andy Murray. I mean, some players...”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is not a strong sport for that, you know, and I suspect we'll talk about the book I wrote about scorecasting that's very much grounded in analytics. And in some sport, I mean, the NBA, the analytics are unreal. I feel like there's been a little bit of blowback recently where there's a sense that people have become too dependent on analytics. And it's a balance. I mean, at some level, the information is always going to help you, but can also help too much. And part of sports is that it's unscripted and unpredictable, and you don't want to really stifle creative impulses, and you have to balance that with making sound decisions, which I think, again, that's a parallel to investing, I suspect. Tennis does not do very well on the analytics front. And I don't know if that is just, it hasn't thought creatively. I don't know if it's the fact that it's not like you can rig up an NBA arena and you're good for 40 days, right? I mean, this is a circuit, so it's in Barcelona.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ideas of momentum and there's ideas of risk reward. And why don't you serve two first serves? Why are you hitting the ball so safely and do you play differently at 40-15 than you would at 1540? And when you're the favorite and you're expected to win, how does that impact your shot selection and when you're facing an adverse set of circumstance? I mean, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff about momentum and the players risk appetite in their reward threshold and how that changes based on the score of the match. I think a lot of it is not necessarily something that conforms to analytics. I mean, a lot of times you can just see a player choking and making bad decisions, making bad investment decisions, panicking when the market is turned. And sometimes there's a pattern and sometimes you can see it. Other times you just see it with your eyes and it's very much intuitive. But again, I see a lot of light.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I have to dive right into this question of, you mentioned decision making and behavior, and there's obviously parallels with everything in decision-making. So what is it about decision-making on the tennis court?”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does the Boston Globe Patriots writer have much of a relationship with Tom Brady? Unlikely. Maybe he talks to him a few times during the season. But with tennis, it's completely different. And one of the nice things about tennis is that it's big enough so that it's on TV. It's legitimate. There's an appetite for it, but it's small enough so that you really get to know some of the players. So you mentioned strokes of genius, the Raphael Nadal and Roger Feder book. We sat down with them and did long interviews with both of them. I wouldn't say we're friends, but we're certainly friendly. There's a cordiality. We didn't have to pay them fees and we didn't have to sign away crazy rights. So covering a sport where you actually can have a relationship with the athletes is really meaningful to me. And I don't think that necessarily exists so many places anymore.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you marry that with this incredibly diverse dual gendered global cast. To me, it's one of the great, if we're going to stay in business terms, this is one of the great underleveraged assets. I mean, this sport to me has so much going for it. And sometimes it's heartbreaking that the sport can't seem to get out of its own way. And sometimes I love the fact that it's kind of this. Everyone knows tennis, but it's still a little bit of a secret in plain sight. And if it got much bigger, I think my relationships would change. The nice thing about covering tennis is you get to know everyone. And if you want, are you an NBA fan? So they're the Oklahoma City beat writer, biggest paper in the state. He covers the thunder, and someone said, Well, what's Westbrook like? What's Russell Westbrook like? I don't know. I've never spoken to him.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's men, it's women, it's teenagers, it's Roger Fedder is a 37 year old father of four, and he'll very easily be playing against an 18-year-old. And Serena Williams' upbringing is completely different from Raphael Nadal's upbringing, and everyone approaches the sport differently. It is known as this country club sport, but really, at least at the professional level, very few players come up that way. And you have this international cast age, you've got veterans, you've got rookies, you have this whole mix and everybody comes together to play this crazy sport, and then they do it alone. And to me, it's just so revealing what it says about players, what it says about human nature, what it says about decision making and behavioral biases and what people do under pressure, it's all right there. So I think sort of the explanatory powers of tennis are so strong.”
2019-06-17 · Capital Allocators · Jon Wertheim – Sports and… (Capital Allocators, EP. 102) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source