Who? Sam Amick explains:
Boston Celtics assistant general manager Mike Zarren is a serious candidate for the Sixers general manager position, sources with knowledge of the search told SI.com.
[snip]
Penn was considered the frontrunner just weeks ago, but sources say his candidacy has taken a serious hit while Zarren and Bower continue to jockey for the job.
First Danny Ferry. Then, Tom Penn. Now Mike Zarren. It feels like the Sixers are hosting a season of The Bachelor. Meanwhile, they just pulled off one of the biggest trades in franchise history without a general manager. Thank God for pizza.
As for Zarren, he's supposedly an advanced stats guy, which doesn't seem like the Sixers style. But neither did Andrew Bynum. We're entering a whole new world of Sixers fandom lately – I'm not sure what to think anymore. Amick has good things to say about Zarren – apparently he started as an unpaid intern in 2003.
For the record, I'm still a Tom Penn guy. Zarren doesn't sound like a bad candidate either. I would not be pleased with Jeff Bower.
UPDATE: Jeff Clark, from Celtics Blog, tweeted us an article on Zarren.
Zarren, who joined the team in 2003 as an intern, is Ainge's database-devising aide de camp, dealing with new-age basketball stats such as Pace factor (average possessions a team uses per 48 minutes) and true shooting percentage (a team's weighted shooting efficiency adjusted for 3-pointers and free throws). Zarren was also one of the stars of the sixth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which invaded the Hynes Convention Center yesterday and runs through today.
Read the rest of the article.