Jalen Rose talks about statistical analysis, the racial dynamics underlying various sports debates, and the moon landing. Source Photograph by Rich Barnes / Getty

Jalen Rose, who became famous as a member of the University of Michigan’s Fab Five basketball team, in the nineteen-nineties, is now one of the most recognizable figures in sports media. At Michigan, Rose was part of a team that included Chris Webber and Juwan Howard and came infamously close to winning the N.C.A.A. championship. He went on to have a successful career in the N.B.A., playing most notably with the Indiana Pacers, the Chicago Bulls, and the Toronto Raptors. Since retiring, in 2007, he has been a regular presence at ESPN and ABC, appearing on ESPN’s morning show, a radio show, and the pregame and halftime show (“NBA Countdown”) for this year’s N.B.A. Finals, in which the Raptors are playing against the Golden State Warriors. Outside of sports, Rose is known for co-founding a charter school, the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, in his home town of Detroit.

I spoke to Rose on Wednesday, before Game 3 of the Finals, which he was covering from Oakland. I had been interested in talking about his basketball and media career, but I started by asking him about the analytics movement, which has revolutionized most major sports, and Rose and I spent most of our conversation discussing it. During the interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the racial dynamics that he sees underlying various sports debates, the good and the bad of the so-called “player-empowerment era,” and whether he was kidding when he recently went on television and cast doubt on the moon landing.

It seems to me that a lot of ex-players don’t like the increasing focus on analytics and advanced stats in the conversation around sports. Do you think that is fair as a generalization, and if so, why do you think that is?

Oh, wow, you are going to start off with a don’t-get-fired topic that I am going to pull you behind the curtain on, if you really want to know the impetus behind the backlash.

I’m all ears.

No. 1, there are many people that feel like it has a cultural overtone to it that basically suggests that, even though I may not have played and you did, I am smarter than you, and I know some things that you don’t know, and the numbers support me, not you. Two, you notice that, when it is a powerful job in sports—whether it is an owner, whether it is a president, whether it is a general manager, whether it is a coach—usually in football and basketball, sports that are primarily dominated by black Americans, it’s also an opportunity to funnel jobs to people by saying that, “I am smarter than you because the numbers back up what I say, and I am more read. I study more. I am able to take these numbers and manipulate my point.” It’s almost like when you hear that a player doesn’t have experience at doing X job. People that normally get the jobs you are describing don’t, either. They didn’t play at most levels, but that suffices as their “experience” and validates their opportunity for power.

Just to be clear, when you say “cultural overtones,” you mean racial overtones?

Correct. And one other point I want to make with that: it is laughable to me when playing experience gets equated to any other type of experience, including coaching. When you play—for example, somebody like me, who has been playing my entire life—for some strange reason that experience gets diminished when it’s time to talk about powerful positions in sports—like, He doesn’t have experience. There is no bigger experience than being in the foxhole, in the huddles, and out on the floor—being a part of the game plan and being game-planned against. But also all the people you learn from: your teammates, the coaches, how to navigate with the media, how to navigate with the fans. Instead of it being, He doesn’t have experience, it really should be, He has more experience than almost anybody walking the earth.

When you say “manipulate,” do you think that analytics people are doing something dishonest for their own ends, or do you just think they don’t have the experience? “Manipulate” is a loaded word.

I am saying it becomes an entry point, a validation.

And let me say this: I give myself a forehead slap like the Three Stooges when I hear players and ex-players say that somebody can’t cover the game that didn’t actually play the game. That is also extremely incorrect. Just because you played the game, that doesn’t mean that you are best at analyzing the game, or coaching the game, or working in the front office. It’s the totality of the individual that allows special people to be able to juggle and be successful at both.

For many years, political reporters would go out to some diner in Pennsylvania, and they were really experienced at travelling and meeting people and reporting their opinions. More recently, statistics experts and polling experts came in—like Nate Silver, who works at your company—and they basically said that, rather than going to diners, we can learn a lot about the American electorate and voting patterns by analyzing data in a complex way. Even though a lot of these people have no experience reporting, they have incredible insight into the American electorate. I wonder if you think that is a fair comparison.

I think what you say does make sense. I appreciate the example. It’s a great one. However, numbers can be manipulated. Look no further than our current election and how it played out. If you were paying attention to all the polls, we would not have thought that the result would end up being [what it was], if you are going only by the numbers. Numbers can be manipulated. Statistics for me are things you can count: points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals. Analytics are things that you quantify: player-efficiency rating (P.E.R.), usage, net whatever. I think analytics should be a tool in the box, not the actual toolbox.

Right, but everything except points, such as rebounds, assists, blocks, steals—all these things are ways of analyzing the goal of the game, which is scoring more points than your opponent. So even if it is a more complex formula like P.E.R., it’s still the same thing. It’s just a more complex and accurate version of what people have been doing forever, which is looking at box scores.

The stats that I just described, for example, for me, they physically take place. I can physically watch a game and see them. By the way, I am not a big stats guy. I am an impact person.

Meaning?

I know just because you had five steals doesn’t mean you are a great defensive player.

You better not be talking about James Harden.

Good example. He led the league in steals. [Harden ranked fourth in steals per game.]

I’m a Rockets fan. I was just trolling you a little bit.

O.K. But with those stats—points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals—I can still take that information, watch the players perform, and see how they got those numbers.

It seems to me that if you go back ten years, a lot of former players were really skeptical about the increasing reliance on the three-point shot. And now we are in a place where basically everyone thinks shooting lots of threes is good. There may be some debate about whether you want to shoot as many as the Rockets or the Bucks do, but basically everyone thinks you should take threes. And if you can take a shot from twenty-three feet that is worth the points, that is better than a shot from nineteen feet worth two points. Why do you think that people were so slow to adopt this idea?