NBA Player Tracking

Let us mention in this blog post about an aspect in NBA which is not widely known and most probably cannot be widely known even in the future: NBA Player Tracking.

NBA board brought an innovation for tha games which are being played and will be played this season. This can only satisfy some people like me who are sick of statistics. According their definition; "NBA Player Tracking is the latest example of how technology and statistics are changing the way we understand the game of basketball." (Well it really seem to be so.)

Beginning the 2013-14 season six extra cameras are placed in the NBA courts only to watch the players movements. These cameras watch almost every movements of the players on the pitch. These movement data are converted to some statistics with the help of a spftware called SportVU. The cameras collect the data from the pitch with a frequency of 25 times per second. (C'mon man! Easy man easy! Snap out of it!)

Well what kind of data are collected from the pitch with this software? Let me give some examples: "Average speed of a player", "How far did a player travel during the game?", "How many times did a player touch the ball?", "How many passes did a player throw?" etc... That much statistics is too much even for me who is sick of statistics!

Let me share some perceptible examples so that the concept can be understood well:

Klay Thompson (GSW) traveled 11,5 miles during the games so far in this season.

Kemba Walker (CHA) touched the ball 100,4 times per game. (Didn't I tell you that this people crazy? Now you believe me, huh?)

MarShon Brooks (GSW) made 1,33 point each time he touch the ball. (Now! This is the peak of craziness. I am going nuts.)

You can reach lots of statistics like this on the page of NBA:
http://stats.nba.com/playerTracking.html
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/11/1/5055376/nba-sportvu-camera-statistics

I will be waiting some correlated statistics from NBA. Some examples from my expectations: The players with 15 or more points who did a fight with their wives a night before, the most assist made from the players who ate tuna in the morning, the ppg rank of the players who didn't shave in the morning and are between 1,90m - 2,00m, the average ppg of the top ten of the most breathed players during the games of the week multiplied with the apg and then divided to pi number, the ppg and apg leaders of the week after taken the Fourier transform of the games. Well you think they are impossible? We'll see.

This system has been utilized in over 2,000 international footbal (soccer) games including European Champions League. If you will see some crazy statistics in the future games don't panic! Just be sure that the only reason of them is this software.