May 26: The Lakers have made it official, announcing today in a press release that Ramadas has been named the team’s assistant general manager of strategy and data systems. He’ll oversee basketball analytics and strategic initiatives for basketball operations, per the team.
“Rohan is an important and strong addition to our front office as we further build out our basketball operations resources,” Pelinka said in a statement. “His unique blend of career experiences and analytical expertise will further strengthen the strong work already taking place internally within our data analytics and salary cap management teams.”
May 25: The Lakers will hire former Pelicans vice president of strategy and operations Rohan Ramadas as an assistant general manager, according to Dave McMenamin and Shams Charania of ESPN. Ramadas will work directly under president of basketball operations and GM Rob Pelinka.
Ramadas joined the Pelicans in September of 2024 as their senior director of analytics and innovation. He was promoted to the VP position last May.
The move was confirmed by Dan Woike of The Athletic (Twitter link), who points to Ramadas’ scientific-based background, which includes more than 12 years with The Aerospace Corporation, and states that he’s “regarded as very smart by people in the league who know him.”
“He’s a literal rocket scientist,” a Pelicans source told McMenamin and Charania, adding that Ramadas implemented AI and coded models to help the front office in New Orleans.
Pelinka said at his end-of-season press conference that the organization had plans to hire two assistant general managers – one to specialize in pro and draft scouting as well as player development, and another to focus on strategy, particularly analytics and the salary cap.
The Lakers held face-to-face meetings with many of the candidates during the draft combine in Chicago, sources tell McMenamin and Charania.
Did such a great job in New Orleans…
He’a a literal PELICAN scientist, the source meant.
Joe Lacob is a data analytics kinda guy. It worked out for him.
And? Have you been under a rock the past, forever, that the pelicans have been bad? How is a ‘rocket scientist’ that helped the pelicans ZERO supposed to help anyone?
He was only there a season and a half. It takes quite a few seasons to go from perennial lottery picks to the finals.
Went from 21 to 26 wins, genius.
Like I said. It takes more than one season to build a winner. You can’t expect it to happen overnight.
The Celtics need to counter with a guy named Gondor