Experience
Mark Deeks is a basketball operations analyst and NBA salary cap expert who seeks all data and information available in order to better understand basketball, the NBA, its players and its teams. He aims to understand NBA games and the NBA marketplace so as to be able to find ways to win games, ways to build teams, ways to work the margins and achieve as much as possible.
Deeks's magnus opus is The Basketball Manifesto. Dated November 2020, it was a 3,775 page, 1.2 million word basketball reference book focused on NBA strategy and team-building, alongside an enormous scouting database.
Previous to this, Deeks also wrote the 2017 and 2018 NBA Manifestos; hugely in-depth forecasts of the offseason strategies of all NBA teams, albeit with smaller databases behind them. The Basketball Manifesto included the G-League, NCAA, EuroLeague and myriad other high-tier competitions.
Elsewhere, Deeks has created the following types of content over the years:
- Video analysis, including film breakdown sessions and an analytical playoff show.
- Scouting, including both individual and team, incorporating both European and NCAA basketball.
- Many breakdowns of the minutiae of salary cap matters and roster construction (for example; potential salary cap ramifications of Steve Nash’s retirement; an explanation of the foundation of TPEs; the Grizzlies’ sub-optimal management of the signing of Juan Carlos Navarro and how restructuring their order of transactions would have seen them consolidate their assets; the importance of contract length, among many others).
- Identifying errors in the already-ratified contracts of both Zach Randolph and Tim Duncan which ultimately led to ex post facto modification.
- Market perspectives, such as the evolution of parity in the NBA and a retrospective on The Process. (Other examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10)
- Strategy-focused analysis on specific transactions; for example, the Clippers’ trading of Blake Griffin or Chicago’s signing of Jabari Parker.
- Also devised, edited and hosted the GiveMeSport NBA Podcast (with uncountable number of guest appearances on others).
- Predictions on transactions that might or could happen based on aforementioned salary cap minutiae, trying to find angles with which to anticipate and improve the efficiency of team strategy (for example; finding the little-used rule that allowed for Nick Collison’s second extension; correctly determining the Nene trade was an extended sign-and-trade; how the Cavaliers spent $1.4 million doing something they could have done for $8,000; the buyout of Luol Deng).
- Profiled on both Grantland and Sports on Earth.
- Consultation with both player agents and team executives, placing non-NBA clients all around the world, from Lithuania to Australia.
Education
Masters in Law, University of Warwick, 2013
