A Quest to the NBA

Alumnus’ junior and senior year Quest project led to current job in the NBA

By Ethan H.

EIt was April 2, and in the same manner as a lottery draft pick, Jeremy Dumalig ’20 got the call. Starting in June, he would be a Basketball Operations Assistant for the Brooklyn Nets.

It felt like a full circle moment: Dumalig’s journey in sports analytics started with a Nueva Quest project and a 10th-grade data analytics elective. For a midterm assignment, he analyzed a data set of every shot Kobe Bryant took in his career, tracking shot location, shot type, opponent, and outcome.

In the summer as a rising junior Dumalig attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Moneyball Academy program, where he solidified his love for sports analytics and decided to pursue it for his 11th and 12th grade Quest project: Using Python, he created an interactive roster builder where users could experiment with the NBA salary cap.

“A lot of it was back-end function work, and this was the project that confirmed and validated that I wanted to work in sports analytics as a career,” Dumalig said. “It also put me on a path to start doing essentially a bunch of Quest projects throughout the entirety of college.”

After graduation, Dumalig attended the University of Chicago. From the beginning, he knew how he would focus his studies: triple-majoring in statistics, economics, and data science.

“I love the work. I’m a workaholic,” Dumalig said. “But, I probably went to 50 professional basketball games in my four years of college since I always operated under the philosophy that if it matters enough to me, I’d always find the time.”

On June 2, the day after his graduation, Dumalig drove from Chicago to New York. Shortly after, he began his work, contributing to various departments in the Nets organization.

Dumalig expressed gratitude to his Nueva computer science teachers Jen Selby and Carl Shan, former Athletics Director Chris Wade, basketball coach Barry Treseler, and freshman advisor Hillary Freeman for encouraging his interests. He also credits Nueva’s approach to teaching and learning for his success.

“One of the biggest things I took away from Quest was taking initiative of my own work. I remember that during 9th-grade Quest, which I did not do about basketball, I had reached out to connect with an alum and it felt very unnatural and uncomfortable for me,” Dumalig recalled. “I wouldn’t say that I took it for granted, but I didn’t know how much gaining that experience early would have helped me until I got to college. And calling my teachers by their first names helped me get better at speaking to people in a formal setting, and that’s something that still helps me now.”