The “Moneyball” revolution has glamorized the introduction of statistical analysis in Major League Baseball, but until recently this analysis has been remarkably under publicized in the NBA and basketball leagues worldwide.
Those days of having to look long and hard for the information are long gone now.
It began before the 2013-14 NBA season, when the league announced that SportVU was going to track player data in all NBA arenas; and more recently, information came out at the Sloane Analytics Conference about new software that can track referee data to be able to game-plan, depending on which set of referees are doing your game and their tendencies.
But SportIQ is going to take the data gathering in professional basketball to another level.
They recently announced and released a product with the unique ability to track a basketball, itself, automatically without any optical system or human workers. In addition, this information combined with the player positions creates a new automated approach to basketball analytics. A video demonstration of the software is below:
SportIQ is a Finnish-based sports analytics company founded in 2008.
With a team of analytics, programming experts, and former athletes, the company’s mission is to make sports analytics automated and more easily available for players, coaches, broadcasters, and fans. The company was the first in the world to automatically track basketball players and the basketball in real-time in the Finnish Basketball League during the 2012-13 season.
Many basketball fans were able to read the article on Grantland.com titled “The Data Ball”; the data is out there, but the key is how to take advantage of it and make it easy to use?
With SportIQ’s real-time tracking system and automated analytics solution, some of this analysis can be done instantly during the game. The result is more advanced and more comparable statistics than what’s ever been available previously including ball-screen, post-play, and offensive sets detection.
Harri Hohteri, Chief Executive Officer of SportIQ says, “Real-time statistics and analytics play an ever increasing role between a win and a loss. SportIQ provides the technology and tools in a user-friendly package, which will result in more W’s.”
Part of the platform is an intuitive coaching app, which is available at the iTunes App Store. It integrates live statistics with game video, coaches can harness the analytics power of the platform in an instant.
It will be very interesting to see how all this data collection by teams will change the game and preparations that will be adjusted with the influx of new data available. It should also change the future of professional basketball in the way players are evaluated and valued.
We will continue to track SportIQ and their progress with the data tracking in professional basketball.
SportIQ can be found on Twitter here.