A new Hi-tech way to evaluate basketball players.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670059/moneyball-20-how-missile-tracking-cameras-are-remaking-the-nba

This is a fascinating article about using cameras and computers designed to track missiles to evaluate basketball players. Ten NBA teams currently use these systems. I wonder if Boston is one of them.

worcester,

Interesting.

Personally, I'd think this has more value when applied to college players than pros. What will this technology tell an NBA coach that 10 years of games and game film won't? Who is the 2nd best rebounder? Does it really matter to a coach if he's 2nd or 3rd or even 4th? What matters is how he gets position for the boards. Does he pad his stats with missed free throws or does he stick his nose in there for a rugged rebound in traffic? Does he run loose rebounds down or does he let them go out of bounds (which neither helps nor hurts his stats, but does make a difference to the team). That type of info has value and I don't think this technology provides that.

College players, on the other hand, don't play more than 4 years and sometimes not even more than 1. Add to that the fact that a national championship year for a college player is about 1/2 of a regular NBA season, and that's not a lot of game film and NO experience by the NBA coaches coaching against them or the players expected to defend against them.

I see this as a big boon for NBA scouts.

Obviously, if 10 teams use this already, I'm missing something here.

bob

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Plus Bob

in college you rarely play a team more than 2X and there are few teams that you even play that many times.

So many intangebles as you say. Did Red need this when he caught his first glimps of Russ, Hondo, ect..???

Think it will help but think many coachs scouts ect will trust what they see with thier eyes on the floor not a statsheet on steroids.

beat

My quick read was that it tells a coach from where a player has most success taking his shot or after how many dribbles. I found it interesting that Westbrook wasn't so effective after five dribbles and that Durant was most effective shooting from 3 particular spots. This could help when scouting teams and setting up defensive assignments. Of course, KG already knows all this stuff, but he won't be around forever.

worcester wrote:My quick read was that it tells a coach from where a player has most success taking his shot or after how many dribbles. I found it interesting that Westbrook wasn't so effective after five dribbles and that Durant was most effective shooting from 3 particular spots. This could help when scouting teams and setting up defensive assignments. Of course, KG already knows all this stuff, but he won't be around forever.

I can just imagine some players now counting the opponents dribbles ( if they can count past 5) then backing off and getting burned. Of course 1/2 of those dribbles are carries and he probably traveled to start with anyway, or will travel when he picks up the dribble.

( if they can count past 5) - That made me laugh! One thing I noticed about Westbrook is that he really palms the ball - and gets away with it. Who do the refs think he is, Michael Jordan?

I posted another article about this a while back.

http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/tech/post/_/id/492/492

I thought I saw this before

But counting to 5 and remembering threw me off a bit

beat