Brad Stevens (Celtics) hires 23 year old stats guru.

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ORLANDO — There was a time when Drew Cannon might have tended bar in Chicago’s North Side at a place near Wrigley Field named Merkle’s Bar & Grill. That time was about one year ago.

It was partially owned by a family member, and it was looking like a steady gig last summer when Cannon moved to Chicago, partly to get away from North Carolina, where he grew up and went to college at Duke University.

But then Brad Stevens, an admirer of the in-depth basketball analytics articles that Cannon had been writing, reached out and offered the 22-year-old a job at Butler University, ultimately making Cannon the first pure statistics-based hire on a college basketball staff.

A year later, Cannon, now 23, will follow Stevens from Butler to the Celtics, though it’s unclear exactly what his role will be. “I’m anxious to add him to our staff to see what he’s all about,” Danny Ainge, the Celtics president of basketball operations, said Monday at the Orlando Summer League.

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