The Toronto Raptors are stepping up their game.
The basketball team has just launched a brand-new, high-tech analytics board to provide players with all sorts of in-depth data on their performance.
At 36.7 metres (120 feet wide), the display takes up an entire wall at the OVO Athletic Centre, the team’s practice facility. The Raptors say this significant size, consisting of 448 individual boards and some 14 million pixels, makes the board the first of its kind in the league.
Not a sports guy, but even I can appreciate the @Raptors’ slick new high-tech analytics board! It’s a 120-feet, 14-million pixel display consisting of 448 individual boards that, alongside cameras above each rim, offers in-depth, real-time data on each player’s performance. 🇨🇦 🏀 pic.twitter.com/t3UZrRlJwv
— Brad Shankar (@bradshankar) October 11, 2022
Using Amazon Web Services and a series of cameras placed above each rim, the board will display a slew of metrics related to each shot, including ball rotation, depth, trajectory and the height of the player’s jump.
The cameras are even capable of facial recognition and motion capture to identify and record data for each player. The team can then freely study all of this data and tweak their shots as necessary.
Cameras have been placed above each net to provide in-depth data on each shot.
These metrics will be captured on two screens on either end of the display, courtesy of Noah Analytics, but the board has other use cases. During a media demo event attended by MobileSyrup, the board also featured replays of a recent match with Chicago, as well as a breakdown of each player’s rebounds and deflections during said match.
The middle screen, which showed the Raptors logo, could also be used for special messaging like “Win.” That said, it’s still early days for the board, and a Raptors representative said the team is looking to discover even more applications down the line.
Screens on either side of the board provide specific data on each shot.
For now, though, the team is already getting good mileage out of the board.
“There were certain things we were starting to emphasize this year,” said Nick Nurse, Raptors head coach, during a conversation with media. “For example, let’s say we were trying to emphasize that the first player across the floor does what we call ‘run to the rim.’ So we pulled out all the clips from last year where that happened, and a guy got a layup or a dunk, and we just let it roll. Then we started doing all the drill work, emphasizing that as it was rolling. And we did that for about three or four days before practice started, so that was probably the best example of doing stuff on the floor that was being shown on top.”
Nick Nurse, head coach of the Toronto Raptors, introduces the board to media.
So far, the team seems to be responding well to it. According to Nurse, Raptors point guard Fred VanVleet said the board is “the best thing they’ve done,” while power forward Thaddeus Young — who’s already invested in tech-powered shot training through Shoot 360 — told us “I like the fact that everything’s amplified” on the big screen. Fellow power forward Pascal Siakam offered similar praise last week.
The Raptors will open the 2022-23 NBA season at home against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday, October 19th.
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