Be the glue guy on your research team 🏀

There are many player roles in basketball.

You have floor generals (point guards), mircowave scorers (bench players who score many points), *big guys *who catch rebounds and defend the rim, or all-stars who defy the laws of physics with dunks, and half-court shots.

There is also the glue guy (or gal).

Often times, a glue guy’s contribution is hard to quantify or to describe. He *glues *the team together, and helps everybody to work better as a unit.

Shane Battier, former NBA player and recognized as an excellent glue guy, wrote a long article on this player archetype: [

Elite ‘Glue Guys’ 101 | By Shane Battier

People like people who help them win. It doesn’t matter if someone thinks you’re goofy or nerdy or different, if you can help someone win at something, they’ll

The Players’ TribuneShane Battier

](https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/elite-glue-guys-101) Here, Shane Battier writes:

In regards to skill set, glue guys can either perform adequately at every task or superbly at only a few. There’s no ideal size, but too small to be a big guy and too big to be a small guy seems to be the preferred range. There is usually one thing you do really well on offense and one thing you really do well on defense.

The glue guy makes everybody else better. He helps you to win.

With countless articles on the Sexiest Job of the 21st Century, it is easy to view yourself as the LeBron James of your research team. That’s hubris – A data scientist is the glue guy.

You are the glue between the statistician, programmer, and domain expert.

Right now, the most wanted skill in many research teams is coding. That might change, but so can you.

For basketball glue guys, the only metric that counts is winning. For data science glue guys, the only metric that counts is advancing the project.

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How can you become a glue guy? Let me know in the comments below!