The NBA and STATS LLC has officially announced their partnership to implement STATS’ SportVU player-tracking cameras in every NBA arena. The announcement isn’t breaking news, but it could mean an altogether different league in the next five years, starting with the NBA’s decision to track referee movements.
The announcement took some by surprise since 15 of the NBA’s 30 teams had already paid the six figure amount needed to insert the cameras around their home arenas. Grantland’s Zach Lowe broke the news a couple weeks ago, and the NBA made it official today:
As the Official Player Tracking Partner of the NBA, STATS’ SportVU — a system of six cameras and STATS’ proprietary software — will be used by all 30 NBA teams during games to calibrate and measure the movements of all players and the ball on the court. The groundbreaking system will provide a continuous stream of innovative statistics based around speed, distance, player separation, and ball possession for detailed and targeted analysis of players and teams
While Lowe was writing about the announcement last night, he mentioned a component that could change the game in the short-term as the NBA begins to evaluate their referees with the new technology:
It won’t tout it, but one reason the league acted fast was to immediately enhance its ability to monitor referees — always a touchy subject. The cameras represent the most precise way to grade the three on-court officials based on how consistently and early they get into the league’s three set positions — called “lead,” “slot,” and “trail” — and whether they make appropriate calls from those positions based on their exact sight lines. This is the next stage in seeing which officials are the best, and thus deserving of high-stakes assignments, and in quantifying that in ways that are hard to dispute.
“We will use whatever data and means we can to improve our referees,” says Steve Hellmuth, the NBA’s executive vice president of operations and technology. “The refs haven’t been tracked before. Now for the first time, they will be.”
Hellmuth goes on to say he’s not really sure whether the league will share the referee data they’ve gathered and analyzed with other teams. We could call this the Mark Cuban Affect (he’s always been outspoken when he disagrees with the officials, and he’s paid a hefty sum in fines because of it), since the granular officiating data on a play-by-play scenario could spell trouble if individual teams are aware of referee quirks and can cry foul when a foul isn’t called in a specific situation where that referee has had a lapse in judgement before.
Needless to say, any technology that gives NBA teams more data is going to be a big issue — especially how they use that data — and the disconnect between what the league knows and the teams know about the officiating has already created a wedge with fans who think referees do the league’s bidding by favoring specific teams over others. But at least the NBA is trying to keep the refs alert to any possible holes in their performance. This should help make their performance better.
In all, we’re pretty excited about the news.
What do you think the ultimate result of these data-tracking cameras will be?
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