ShotTracker professional debut a slam dunk for the game of basketball
Every National Basketball Association rookie makes his professional debut with high hopes for an accomplished and long career. An innovative real-time game-tracking platform for the game of basketball — ShotTracker — recently made its professional debut as well, and its success is something that any NBA rookie would be envious of.
ShotTracker provided its services, which include tracking every movement of both the ball and all the players on the court, for every game of the 2017 NAIA men’s basketball championship tournament in Kansas City, Missouri.
“We did one game earlier this year, but this is our first tournament of any kind” ShotTracker co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Dayveon Ross said. “We thought why not start out with the most intense opportunity possible, with 31 games in five days. If we can successfully pull this off, there’s nothing that our product can’t do.”
The product has come a long way since its origins as a program that was designed to help individual players improve their shooting.
“It was just doing what any business does, responding to our customers,” Ross explained. “We had a lot of people who used the individual application say they would love to be able to use it in practice with their teams. Practice is a completely different animal, though. You have 18 players, a dozen balls, six hoops, that’s a lot to track. So we started developing the team program and it’s been successful.”
How ShotTracker’s Game Tracking Works
At the NAIA tournament, a sensor was placed inside every game ball, at strategic places in the roof of the Municipal Auditorium (the tournament’s venue) and worn by every player on the court. The sensors communicate with computers compiling the data through ultra wide-band technology. That data is then transmitted in functional ways like shot charts to users in real-time.
“There are many different advantages with our solution,” Ross stated. “It’s much more accurate and efficient. The most critical thing is that the data is much more readily available. A coach can actually look at how her/his team is performing during a time out versus having to go back over the video that night and record the stats. The need to have someone take those statistics, put them in an Excel spreadsheet and then have useful data later that night is gone. It’s a tremendous value for teams.”
The statistics provided by ShotTracker at the NAIA tournament weren’t just available to coaches and players, however. Every fan who had an interest in the games had the same access through ShotTracker’s mobile application, which Ross said has averaged over 1,000 sessions per day at the tourney.
“The feedback this week has been incredible,” Ross added. “We have even had some officials coming and asking for our product for their use. People are blown away by the app.”
Because of the product’s success, the vision for its future plots out a path to even more positive returns.
“We’re going to the NABC convention at the Final Four,” Ross commented. “After that we need to take some time and go through everything we have learned. Then we will start sales, after the Final Four we are going to take this product to the market. The big vision is that ShotTracker should be to gyms like wifi is to coffee shops. We are going to focus on the collegiate market, tournaments, facilities, and then follow with high schools.”
While that may be where the sales focus will start, that’s not the sum total of what ShotTracker has in the works. Partially due to investors who have connections to the NBA, including but not limited to Los Angeles Lakers President Magic Johnson and former Commissioner David Stern, the product has garnered interest from NBA teams as well.
“It’s been interesting because it’s been inbound,” said Ross. “We are working with some elite professional teams who have expressed interest in what we’re doing. I can’t disclose which teams because it’s in the initial stages. There are some forces bigger than us, in terms of the collective bargaining agreement, that come into play. There has been some progress made in terms of getting the players open to wearables. They aren’t there yet. When they are ready, we’ll be here.”
The NBA currently has a contract with STATS, LLC. and their SportVU spatial tracking system, which provides a similar data set for teams to work with. Their cameras are in all 30 arenas and some of their statistics are available to the public at the NBA’s website. However, the cost of the SportVU system may be prohibitive for teams to install in places like practice facilities and which increases the appeal of less expensive products like Shot Tracker for use outside of game settings.
Next: Progressing toward personalized analytics - A Q&A with Patrick Lucey of STATS
If the continued use of ShotTracker is as successful as its debut, it won’t be long until we’ll be seeing it in all sorts of places. Spatial tracking is pushing the game of basketball forward, giving those who use it a clear advantage. ShotTracker is looking to stay ahead of the curve.