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Turner College Economist's Co-Author Earns Television Fame via the Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Syracuse University economist Shane Sanders, an occasional collaborator on research with Turner College economist Frank Mixon, earned late-night television fame earlier this week when his study on shot selection in the NBA was profiled, and parodied, by Stephen Colbert in a new segment for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The first entry of Colbert's self-described "highly profitable, hastily assembled segment" called Talkin' Sportz, covered results of Sanders' new research indicating that "NBA teams are taking too many 3-point shots." Colbert jokingly stated that the study was published in the "prestigious New England Journal of Can You Even Dunk, Bro?"  Colbert then explained to his audience that the study indicates that players score more points by attempting 2-pointers rather than 3-pointers, after which he pointed out that the title of the study is "Estimating NBA Team Shot Selection Efficiency from Aggregations of True, Continuous Shot Charts." Colbert concluded by roasting the study via an edited video clip of an actual game wherein NBA legend Tracy McGrady takes a game-winning shot that is described by the television announcer excitedly as "McGrady for the win and it is . . . [as ball is flying through the air] . . . an aggregation of efficient shot selections!" Of course, the last part of the announcement occurs as the game-winning attempt falls through the net.
     Mixon describes Sanders (shown at right) as "a really good economist" whose research interests include sports economics, public choice, defense and peace economics, and behavioral economics. Four months ago, Sanders launched a sports analytics blog via Substack called SportQuant that covers the quantitative side of sports and society. Sanders' sports economics research covers home court advantage, competitive balance, revenue sharing, alliance formation, team chemistry, ticket pricing, collective bargaining, and mortality risk. Sanders and Mixon have each worked separately on social choice violations in NCAA cross country's rank sum scoring. With regard to collaboration between the two, Mixon and Sanders, along with Andrew Luccasen, a behavioral economist at the Mississippi University for Women, are currently preparing a study on how the economics of civil liability, as it relates to law and economics, is depicted in various episodes and scenes from the iconic television sitcom Seinfeld. Stay connected to Turner Business for more on that paper in a future blog.


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