Dr. Katherine Evans will be the first woman to lead the research and analysis department of an NBA franchise. Will do it for Washington Wizards starting next season, as announced by Monumental Basketball, the company that exploits the rights to the franchise.
“Dr. Evans is an exceptional talent with a genuine passion for basketball, and is widely respected in league and academic circles,” explained Sashi Brown, CEO of the Washington-owned company. “You will bring innovative approaches and perspectives and will be a great leader for our department of investigations, whose mission is to identify the competitive advantages for all our athletes, caregivers and performance team ”.
In addition to leading the work of the Wizards, Evans will also coordinate the work of the WNBA Washington Mystics, G-League Capital City Go-Go and Wizards District Gaming. Evans’ title will be vice president of research and information systems.
In the past, Evans served as strategy director for the Toronto Raptors. In the Canadian franchise, he developed methods for analyzing the players and strategies on the court, as well as supervising the sources of information to build a reliable database on young hopefuls of the NBA Draft.
Evans has a doctorate in biostatistics from Harvard and spent two years working as a scientist at Verily Life Sciences.