How Your Words Can Predict Your Future
Speaking an NBA career into existence
What can your choice of words say about you?
This week, I saw an intriguing research paper out of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference in Boston, an event I have been to before. It suggests that the frequency of certain word choices used by collegiate basketball players can forecast a successful future in the NBA.
On the surface, this sounds kinda bonkers. But the fact that the co-author was a highly regarded social psychologist, James W. Pennebaker, a pioneering figure in linguistics and trauma, gives it some heft.
Before we jump into the methodology, let’s start with the motivation. Traditional NBA scouting has primarily rested on physiological metrics (such as from the combine) and performance metrics (from box scores). More recently, an effort is underway to better evaluate the mental side of performance, too.
One way is to look at how certain choices are made. Sports psychologists (and journalists) often do that by asking athletes, after the fact, why they made that pass here or took that shot there. What often separates great athletes, however, is that they make the right decisions without thinking, either because of heavy training and scripted sets or some other instinctual je ne sais quoi.
Another issue with self-reporting is that people tend to mold their answers to fit what they think an interviewer wants to hear. This is especially true when the interviewer represents an NBA team to which a prospective collegiate player is hoping to be drafted.
Access to the subconscious decision-making apparatus in athletes, then, would offer a more authentic picture of the person and how he or she thinks. This is where language comes in.
Language studies have found that how you say something can be a lot more revealing than what you say. We tend to think about the content of our language as we are speaking. But it’s the filler words that actually form the meatiest bits of our psychological profile, because they are harder to manipulate consciously.
Pennebaker has an umbrella term for them. He calls them “function words.” They include pronouns, articles, prepositions, and a small number of other common words. Pennebaker is the author of the book The Secret Life of Pronouns, and his theory is that these words offer clues about feelings and thought-processes.
So…
Can “function words” carry over to the NBA?
In the Sloan paper, the researchers analyzed the transcripts of more than 25,800 postgame interviews conducted by NCAA men’s basketball players between 1995 and 2023. They found that, using a language psychology model called LIWC (Language Inquiry and Word Count), they could predict with 63 percent accuracy which athletes will successfully make it on to an NBA roster. LIWC was also successful at predicting which of those players will be able to last in the league beyond a four-year rookie contract.
Let’s look at one of the examples brought up by lead author Sean Farrell, a data scientist from Australia. He pointed to this excerpt from a postgame interview with Jayson Tatum, then at Duke, in 2017:
“This was big time for us because, obviously, we lost to them early in January. We realize that we’re a much different team from then. We went through a lot of ups and downs. We’re continuing to grow and learn and get better each and every day. So this was a big stepping stone for us. Like Coach said, Louisville is a Final Four calibre team with a great coach and great players. So for us to come back and play the way we did today after a good win yesterday in less than 24 hours was huge for us.”
You will notice, if you are looking closely, there are 12 conjunctions in this selection of 100 words (conjunctions, for those reaching back into their old English class studies, are connective words like and or because). Conjunctions add complexity to a simple sentence. Psychologists consider the use of conjunctions to be a signifier of deeper analytical thinking and slower decision making.
There are also four present focus words, such as “realize,” “we’re,” and “is.” Present focus words, the researchers said, is a stand-in for mindfulness, a good trait for top performers.
“Those who are more likely to not make it into the NBA use more complicated language and ruminate more on the past than look to the future,” the researchers said.
One example the researchers gave was Khris Middleton, a late-second round pick whose college resume and physical attributes didn’t exactly scream future NBA All-Star. But his linguistic score told a different story.
Compare that with Craig Brackins, the 21st overall selection in the 2010 NBA draft, who was a dominant big man in college. His mindset metrics, however, were badly off the mark. His NBA career lasted only 17 games.
When discussing the results, Farrell makes an interesting point. The language analysis shouldn’t be confused with a reflection on intelligence. In fact, the researchers are strictly avoiding the content of the remarks. Their focus was on the function words, the little fillers that can be greatly revealing about mindset and decisiveness.
There are certainly flaws in the picture provided here. The dataset was based off published ASAP transcripts from postgame press conferences at major events like the NCAA tournament. If your team didn’t make it to the Dance, your words probably never made it into this study.
That also means that great superstars like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, who never played in college, were also not reflected in this study.
As a former sports reporter, I might also quibble with the choice of tournament postgame press conferences, which are often big, bright, intense, heavily scrutinized events that might not be perfectly reflective of an athlete’s truer character in a more relaxed, normal setting.
All that being said, I loved the unconventional effort being made to access subconscious decision-making. It has also inspired me to choose my words wisely — even the little ones.
Talk soon,
Zach
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References
Beyond the Box Score: Using Psychological Metrics to Forecast NBA Success