David J. Berri (born September 26, 1969) is a sports economist and professor of economics at Southern Utah University, known for his sometimes-controversial analysis of NBA basketball.
Berri is best known for co-authoring, along with Martin Schmidt and Stacey Brook, the 2006 book The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport.
The book opened to favorable reviews in several major media outlets, including endorsements from Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker and Joe Nocera in The New York Times.
Berri's work is frequently viewed as a lightning rod for criticism because the Wins Produced model often runs counter to the conventional wisdom of basketball.
He has also criticized non-box score-based stats like Adjusted Plus-Minus, claiming that the basic box score numbers tell decision-makers most of what they need to know about a player's value.