Eyeing a deep playoff run this season, the Toronto Raptors are doing everything in their power to claim the NBA Eastern Conference. After officially opening a new state-of-the-art training facility yesterday, the BioSteel Centre, the Raptors also announced a partnership with IBM.
The Raptors installed the IBM Sports Insights Central, a data analytics platform for talent assessment that is powered by IBM Watson. Raptors management are now able to view, organize and sift through relevant data about their current roster and the rest of the NBA.
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Using touchscreen technology, any member of the Raptors staff can easily observe how a certain player is performing at any moment, backed by real time data.
It looks like this will be most helpful as the Raptors are evaluating trades and draft picks. The IBM Sports Insight Central can automatically quantify the financial and performance impact of a player on the current team. With this deal, the Raptors are buying into a system that should make searching through potential draft picks quicker than ever before.
The new Raptors Insights Central inside BioSteel Centre. #WeTheNorth pic.twitter.com/8PbnY8eI7N
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) February 10, 2016
“This pioneering work and extensive collaboration with MLSE and the Toronto Raptors to design this solution will provide the Toronto Raptors, and eventually other professional sports franchises, with a faster means to share, visualize and drive time-critical decisions,” said Jim Rushton, Global Leader, IBM Sports and Entertainment Practice.
At the moment, the available information only deals with talent assessment and financial impact, but IBM hopes to extend that to all aspects of the game, such as training or health and fitness.
Check out pics of BioSteel Centre, our new practice facility. #WeTheNorth
Gallery: https://t.co/5rKJ4HVQb9 pic.twitter.com/N2kcspXeah
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) February 10, 2016
Technically, the partnership exists between IBM and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE)—the latter also owns the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto FC, among others. So, it will be interesting to see if MLSE begins to implement IBM technologies across their various teams.