During a Q&A event at the TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco earlier this month, Stephen Curry was asked by moderator Jordan Crook about the idea of NBA officials being replaced by technology at some point.
“I would love that,” said Curry to the disrupt crowd. “I would have to throw my mouthpiece at those new inventions.” Curry’s comment was made in jest as he was referencing to an incident from Game 6 of the NBA Finals where he threw his mouthpiece after being called for a foul he disagreed with.
Curry showing up to be interviewed about things going on in the tech world isn’t a surprise. The Golden State Warriors have relied on the Silicon Valley world for a lot of the player performance data that helped keep the team healthy during their 2015 Finals run and Curry himself has invested in a few tech companies — including Slice, which he talked about in the beginning of the interview.
“Myself, and one of my best friends, my teammate from Davidson […] started brainstorming the idea about two years ago to sort of leverage my social media presence and the ways athletes interact with their fans and brands and sponsors off the court. We started brainstorming ideas and came up with a way to control the content that we have as influencers and our relationship with brands to make it as smooth as possible. So it’s a platform that allows us to distribute the content in an efficient way.”
While we’re probably a ways away from robots taking over officiating duties in the NBA, tech has made things easier on the officials to get things right with instant replay. For the time being, we’ll just have to imagine Curry throwing things at robots instead of seeing it happen on the hardwood.
