The Los Angeles Lakers announced they have named Rohan Ramadas as assistant general manager of strategy and data systems, overseeing basketball analytics and strategic initiatives for basketball operations.
“Rohan is an important and strong addition to our front office as we further build out our basketball operations resources,” President of Basketball Operations and General Manager Rob Pelinka said in a statement. “His unique blend of career experiences and analytical expertise will further strengthen the strong work already taking place internally within our data analytics and salary cap management teams.”
Ramadas most recently served as vice president of strategy and basketball operations for the New Orleans Pelicans. He spent nine seasons with the Pelicans organization, including the last two in a full-time role following seven years as an analytics consultant.
Prior to his time in New Orleans, Ramadas served as a draft analyst for the Miami Heat during the 2016-17 season. In addition to his basketball experience, Ramadas spent the past 12 years supporting The Aerospace Corporation, the United States Space Force and NASA as a rocket guidance, navigation, control and mission design engineer. According to people who know Ramadas, he is a literal rocket scientist and a strong addition to the Lakers organization.
Ramadas has some familiarity in his new home as he is a native of Cupertino, Calif. and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in astronautical engineering from the University of Southern California.
Under new ownership, the Lakers are clearly looking to find any advantage they can, which includes expanding the front office around Pelinka.
Lakers will add another assistant GM
Ramadas is the first of two assistant general managers the Lakers will be hiring this offseason and Pelinka recently explained what they will be looking for in the other one.
“The two biggest positions that I mentioned is we will hire two assistant general managers, that’s the plan. One of those general managers would be sort of over player, draft and evaluation processes. That’s pro scouting, draft scouting, player development. The other assistant GM will be more on the strategy side, with the cap, analytics and data. Again, not that we’ve had holes in these places, we’ve got a great team of people that work incredibly hard. It’s just we want to add more to that for both those assistant GM positions. We have started a wide search and have begun interviews but haven’t hired out either of those.”
With Ramadas handling the strategy, analytics and data side, the Lakers’ other assistant general manager will be on the player, draft and evaluation side.
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