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When Jeffrey Ma was asked by the Portland Trail Blazers to help the team make more data-driven decisions, he knew there would be ups and downs along the way.

The professional Blackjack player – the M.I.T. grad who inspired the Hollywood movie 21 and the novel Bringing Down the House – was used to taking risks. He had once found himself $100,000 in the hole after a couple of unlucky hands. But he later rebounded to win that money back, plus another $70,000.

Jeffrey Ma talks about his work with the Portland Trail Blazers.

Now Ma runs Citizen Sports, a consultancy for professional sports teams. He was invited by Kevin Pritchard, currently general manager of the Trail Blazers, to create an analytical model of predictive metrics for the NBA.

“That relationship didn't come without friction,” Ma recalls. “At one point, Kevin stopped the meeting and said, hey, how can we make your numbers look a little more like our numbers?"

But Ma countered that his job wasn't to agree with the team's coaches. It was to provide an objective viewpoint based on hard information. He's still advising the team, in addition to the NFL's San Francisco 49ers.

“Analyzing things from a statistical standpoint is going to tell you things scouts can't,” he says. “Your scouts can't watch every game and don't think in terms of numbers.”

Ma's message, shared at a Toronto event hosted by the SAS Institute, has a wider implication for the business world: Don't ignore data that's being collected and analyzed by your company. Use it to your advantage.

The business world is just scratching the surface of analytics, says Pat Finerty, vice-president of alliances and business development at SAS. There are barriers in the way of unlocking more value from data. Resistance to change is one of them.

“People who've found success by doing things the same way as others are hesitant to change,” he says.

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