The Toronto Raptors, SportVU cameras, and the NBA's analytical revolution

Post by dfxm12 » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 7:28 PM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #14

ssharp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering why the 15 other teams aren't on board yet. If the price is only 100k, it's nothing to an NBA team. If those other 15 teams don't already have an advanced analytics team in place, then it makes sense not to have the camera until you have a structure in place to make sure of the camera data. It will be interesting with this huge push in basketball over the past couple years to see where this type of anal…

I completely agree, but, as referenced in the article, there is still pretty strong resistance to analytics-driven decision making in the NBA. Many NBA coaches and GM's are former players, who generally resist advanced stats. Hence "it can't measure personality, chemistry, heart." That quote fails to mention neither can anything else, so it makes much more sense to focus on what can be measured than on what can't (I'…

Post by abecedarius » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 7:48 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #5

mmc wrote: post #2

The "ghost" players in these animated replays that show where the system thinks a player should have been are fascinating to see. I wonder how automatic it is - if games could be analyzed like that without much expert input, this would be a really cool thing to have for recreational teams who want to get better but can't afford expert coaching. I'm thinking my late-night adult league hockey team would probably benefi…

I'd be pretty curious about that too. I actually tried doing something semi-similar before. My goal was to simulate a basketball game by having every player take an action based on "expected points per possession". So if you are covered tightly but a shooter is open, your expected points would be high for passing but low for shooting. This would then be done recursively for every decision, continuously looking ahead…

Post by GFischer » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 8:14 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #19

Wow, memories. In 1998 I worked on the FIFA World Cup graphics, and two guys on the team were developing a camera player tracking and stat acquisition system. Back then, raw CPU power was a real limitation; the fastest PCs were PII 333 Mhz and they just couldn't track automatically 22 players from 4 cameras (one atop each corner of the stadium). In the end the system was almost working, however we needed two people w…

Post by icelancer » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 10:21 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #13

the_watcher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the cameras are pricey enough that only 15 of 30 NBA teams have purchased them, not to mention the half decade of work it took the Raptors to build the code to actually generate the visualizations. Maybe someday it will be commercially available and affordable, but that day seems a long way off to me.

I'm wondering why the 15 other teams aren't on board yet. If the price is only 100k, it's nothing to an NBA team. If those other 15 teams don't already have an advanced analytics team in place, then it makes sense not to have the camera until you have a structure in place to make sure of the camera data. It will be interesting with this huge push in basketball over the past couple years to see where this type of anal…

Post by muyuu » Tue, Mar 19, 2013, 11:30 PM UTC

recroad wrote: post #24

As a long-time Raptors fan and the co-founder/owner of the most read Raptors blog, I can confirm that none of this technology has helped the Raptors.