NBA

Can MBAs & data crunching save Knicks, Rangers?

A curiosity emerged from James Dolan’s wide-ranging interview with The Post’s Mike Vaccaro last week: He hired McKinsey & Company, the world’s premier management consulting firm, to help him with the ongoing problems known as the Rangers and the Knicks.

This is big news, not only because the famous control freak Dolan is willing to take someone else’s advice. It shows that his sports teams are joining the corporation-like, data-driven model of the future.

So, who is McKinsey? They’re managerial experts, the businessman’s businessmen. They’re the ones who get called in to help a company’s CEO figure out just what the heck he or she should do, whether its cutting costs, changing strategies or redrawing the entire organizational chart.

Founded nearly 100 years ago by a Chicago accounting professor named James McKinsey, they bring a “fact-based and analytical approach” to corporate problem solving, as well as an outsider’s ability to see things more clearly than those stuck in the weeds. They are the anthropologists of the modern and evolving social organism called the corporation. And they are also its engineers — they know as well as anyone how this human machine works.

That’s all well and good, you might be thinking, but you might also be wondering what a bunch of white-shoe consultants — we’re talking about the Harvard MBA crowd here — have to offer a sports team other than a steady stream of money spent entertaining clients at home games.

McKinsey is no stranger to the NBA. The firm has been working with the league since 2003, in fact, analyzing individual teams’ effectiveness at maximizing revenues, particularly in their local markets. The consultants have also worked with the league in analyzing its revenue-sharing agreements.

But what about at the individual team level? It’s not like McKinsey is going to help the coaches design plays, is it? I certainly hope not. But there is a lot they will be able to do.

For starters, let’s talk about Big Data. Sports teams — and fans — have always been stat happy, especially in the “Moneyball” era, but data analysis is becoming an ever-more-important part of player selection and development. Forget the simple statistics everyone used to determine a player’s value: We’re talking about advanced analytics that measure everything from how much time athletes spend sleeping to gauges of their perspiration, their respiration and the effects of physical impact.

More resources are being poured into the search for correlations between player development — in practices, games and even at home — and, ultimately, wins. Believe it or not, but the Holy Grail of coaching—knowing who is contributing the most to wins and how — is as likely to be found in a spreadsheet than it is anywhere else.

And here’s the thing: Most teams aren’t even equipped to collect that kind of data, let alone analyze it or use it to make decisions. And it isn’t simply a data problem — it’s also a management problem. Once you finally know all you can about your talent, you’ve then got to decide what to do with it. Talent management is a McKinsey specialty — and while they’ll work on it for any kind of client, from a factory making frozen peas to a charity organization, they can certainly do the same for a sports team.

The consultants also specialize in those areas fans don’t pay much attention to: television rights, Internet rights, sponsorship sales, arena configuration and optimization of ticket prices.

(Okay, fans pay attention to that last one, but not in the way that McKinsey does.) It doesn’t matter if the Knicks and Rangers already sell out most games and have big money sponsorships to boot.

Because McKinsey also specializes in squeezing blood out of stones. And the more money that you bring in, the more you can spend on elite players. And the more you know about those players, the more effectively you can use them. Then you win more, and then your TV rights are worth more and your ticket prices go up. The virtuous circle.

Before we get too excited, I should point out that Dolan’s stated reason for hiring McKinsey was because he’d realized the need to “reprocess” both teams. What the hell does that even mean? I’ll tell you what I think it means — that Dolan was trying to sound smart, and didn’t succeed. It’s just a word, that’s true, but it’s also one that might never have been used in the context of professional sports management. At least he’s trying.

Of course, seeing the news that Dolan had hired McKinsey made me think of one other thing. Since its founding, McKinsey has had a reputation for speaking truth to power, for telling the boss the bad news that no one else has had the guts to say out loud. If they stay true to that promise, they might just end up telling Dolan that he is the problem, and that the solution is to fire himself. But don’t get your hopes up.

Duff McDonald is a New York-based business writer. His latest book, “The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business,” was released by Simon & Schuster in September.