76ers' Daryl Morey's AI usage isn't surprising, but it is troubling

76ers team president Daryl Morey gave an unsurprising comment on his use of AI and large language models in his decision making process for the team, and it's something that should give fans a considerable amount of pause.

Speaking to Pablo Torre, Morey said he "absolutely" gives AI and LLMs a vote in all his decision making processes with the team.

76ers president Daryl Morey says he asks A.I. for input when making team decisions.

"We absolutely use models as a vote in any decision." pic.twitter.com/RaERlg1s7N
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) March 13, 2025

"We absolutely use models as a vote in any decision," Morey said, "And how much of that decision depends on how much the assumptions behind those models don't change and their past success rate. So, if you have a highly successful model for picking draft picks, and we think that the game...hasn't changed the rules, then the models get a lot of weight in those decisions."

Morey went on to say that LLMs have a good track record of success at prediction, but aren't beating human "super forecasters" in that regard.

None if this is surprising from Morey, but it is troubling if you're a Sixers fan. Morey has always been an analytics guy, and always pushing the envelope of how technology can be used to aid the decision-making process. There's no denying the impact he's had across the league on driving front office decision making into the 21st century from a technological perspective, so it would make sense that he'd incorporate LLMs into that process now.

But therein lies the rub. LLMs are not decision-making engines; they are algorithms designed to regurgitate collated data into a conclusion that may or may not be accurate. They don't think, they don't learn beyond what they're told, and they certainly shouldn't have a "vote" in any kind of decision making process for any NBA team beyond presenting amalgamations of data.

Making decisions in the NBA is hard. Incredibly hard, in fact. Busts happen in the draft for a reason, trades go poorly for a reason. The dirty secret is that no one knows exactly what's going to work, and there's no guaranteed recipe for success.

Treating an LLM like a scout makes sense if you don't think too hard about it. It's just analyzing data, right? That's true to an extent, but as we see time and time and time again, these algorithms screw up constantly. They spit out decisions that make no sense, or that are factually incorrect, and there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to when that happens.

Morey shouldn't be trusting his LLMs to make decisions for him, and he shouldn't be giving them a vote in any process. Either they're verifying what your human scouts and analysts are telling you, in which case what was the point of using them, or they're coming up with a different conclusion than everyone else, in which case it begs the question of whether the algorithm is correctly tuned or not.

And given how this season has progressed in Philadelphia, it certainly seems like Morey's LLMs could do with some tweaking.

Home/NBA