Jessica Gelman sharpened her basketball skills in pickup games at YMCAs growing up in suburban Chicago, rocking her black sneakers just like Michael Jordan and the rest of the Bulls. Sure, the future co-founder of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference wanted to play like Jordan — and Gelman developed into the kind of Ivy League standout that saw her burst into a 1,000-point scorer and co-captain at Harvard — but her appreciation of his greatness stretched beyond the court.
Like Jordan, Gelman wanted to separate herself from the field.
“So I did a behind-the back dribble,” she said, laughing, “which was not a thing that girls did in the ’80s and ’90s.”
