The Hero's Journey: NBA Analyst Edition

Why the best basketball executives need to channel their inner Luke Skywalker

Every other week I write an email discussing what I learn launching and growing Reboot Motion. If you would like to receive it directly in your inbox, subscribe below.

Biomechanics is coming to the NBA.

If MLB is a guide, the adoption from teams will range widely. Some will dive in- they know a better understanding of movement will help decision making…and they understand titles are won and lost at the margins.

Others will dip their toes. They’ll have an analyst or two create reports that may or may not make their way to a coach’s desk.

And the rest will ignore it for a while. They will wait for others to discover new advantages, and they’ll copy them years later….after doing so becomes table stakes.

Call to Adventure:

This past March, Hawk-Eye and the NBA changed the data landscape for team analysts. Below is Kirk Goldsberry’s announcement for ESPN:

The NBA and Sony Sports on Thursday announced a multiyear partnership with Hawk-Eye Innovations that will change how the league tracks in-game action.

Hawk-Eye's optical tracking technology is designed to capture player and ball movement in real time in three dimensions.

The NBA's adoption of Hawk-Eye technology follows its widespread use in other sports, including tennis and soccer, where it has helped referees quickly review officiating decisions, including offside calls at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

The technology replaces the "center of mass" tracking system used by Second Spectrum, which estimates each player's location using a single point location.

The introduction of "pose tracking" provides new officiating capabilities to support better and faster decision-making, with the intent to increase the accuracy of officiating calls and the speed of play. In addition, the system will give the NBA and its teams the ability to measure and analyze athletic movement in new ways.

Sportradar, the NBA's exclusive data provider, will work alongside Hawk-Eye to allow for the generation of tracking data sets, metrics, advanced stats and insights.

In a statement, the NBA indicated that the leaguewide implementation of Hawk-Eye's optical tracking technology will begin in the 2023-24 season.

In short: this is the Moneyball revolution 20 years later. Over the past two decades, the advantages gained by the 3 point shot, defensive versatility, and other “obviously important things” were exploited by those willing to dive in.

Now, skeletal data is here.

For the first time, NBA teams will have x-ray vision into how their athletes move…in games and in practice. Those that use it to better understand 1) shooting 2) fatigue 3) physical ability and more will discover tomorrow's common beliefs today.

Refusal of the Call:

Given Reboot’s background of turning raw video and motion capture data into action in Major League Baseball, we have talked with many NBA teams already. They’ve asked us a lot of questions, and we’ve asked some back.

Our questions are centered around what people want to learn, now that they’ll be able to track every movement of every player in every game.

The answers are surprisingly consistent…and are mostly some variation of “we don’t know”.

To us, this is not a lack of imagination, but rather a lack of knowing how to get started. No matter how talented a coach, an analyst, or a GM is, they will need help navigating a seismic shift in data. They will need a guide to show them what they can do with their new found x-ray vision.

Meeting the Mentor:

Enter Reboot Motion. Mentoring talented analysts, executives, and coaches in movement analysis is what we do.

We want to help great coaches develop their athletes. We want to help analysts build the next wave of cutting edge models and reports. And we want to help executives turn over every stone before making the ultimate decision.

Crossing the Threshold and Beyond:

Most teams have yet to cross the threshold. They will soon.

And they will likely do so with a single data analyst, a single shooting coach, or a single biomechanist who knows this is the next big thing- the next big way to constantly innovate.

But make no mistake- there will be blockers along the way.

There will be messy data…and a lot of it.

There will be a lack of knowing where to start…and little clarity on where the finish line is.

There will be people that don’t care…and others that don’t trust anything that isn’t coming from a biomechanics lab.

However, for those willing to fight through the obstacles, the reward on the other side- both for the team and the individual- will be huge.