Big Think
@bigthink·8.8M subscribers·10.1K videos
David Stern: Big Data, Advanced Analytics, and a New Age for the NBA | Big Think.
Posted
January 5, 2015
Views
22,441
Likes
268
Comments
13
Engagement
1.25%
January 5, 2015
22,441
268
13
1.25%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
3:36Now PlayingBig Data, Advanced Analytics, and a New Age for the NBA
Watch the newest video from Big Think
Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Several years ago, the NBA installed SportsVU cameras in every team arena. The data collected by these cameras has fueled a big data renaissance that has team front offices relying on advanced analytics to improve court strategy. Commissioner Emeritus David Stern explains how the new statistics have changed the league and posits that future stats will only be more impressive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAVID STERN:
David Stern completed his three-decade tenure as NBA commissioner on February 1, 2014.
As commissioner, Mr. Stern built the model for professional sports in league operations, public service, global marketing and digital technology. He oversaw the NBA’s extraordinary growth with seven new franchises, a more than 30-fold increase in revenues, a dramatic expansion of national television exposure and the launch of two leagues, the Women’s National Basketball Association and the NBA Development League. He implemented the first anti-drug agreement in professional sports and introduced the salary cap system and revenue sharing to the NBA.
The NBA experienced tremendous global growth during Mr. Stern’s tenure, and that growth continues today: The NBA has 12 offices outside the United States; its games and programming are televised and streamed in 215 countries and territories in 47 languages; and it offers fans 18 international online destinations. The NBA was the first U.S. professional sports league to stage regular-season games outside North America, and the league has played nearly 150 international preseason and regular-season games to date.
Mr. Stern also oversaw the launch of the leagues’ digital assets, including NBA.com, WNBA.com, and NBADLeague.com; social media platforms; NBA LEAGUE PASS; NBA TV; and mobile applications, all of which reach hundreds of millions of fans every day.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:
David Stern: We decided to install SportsVU cameras because they gave really enhanced data but they were being installed individually by certain select teams. And we thought that it should be available to the league as a whole. Those teams weren’t that happy about it but the tradeoff was they now got the data as all teams did from 29 arenas rather than from just the few that had it. And that has worked out very well for us.
If you want to have four trillion facts you can go to NBA.com/stats and the SAP HANA program will give you all of those statistics. You’ve got the SportsVU statistics. You’ve got a high speed arena network that brings the video back from every arena for replay. But once it’s there for replay it can be diced and chopped and sent out, Tweeted, you name it. So we’re, you know, the age of analytics is upon us and we wanted to be ahead of it. And that’s like an example of things being available to us that weren’t available before. Pre SportsVU – a decade ago we were primitive compared to where we are now and I think in another decade we’ll look back and see how primitive we are now but we’re so much further advanced because I’ve been wearing my venture capital hat. I’ve been looking at some applications in sports. It’s amazing and it’s like not amazing. You know and you can stop the camera and look. At this moment that player in that position if he shoots he’s a 60 percent shooter. If he moves three feet to his right or his left or down court he becomes a 40 percent shooter. You know the ability to know so much about your team and every other team and about every player current and future is very much going to make big data a much more relevant player in all sports and including the NBA.
It’s currently at the stage where every team has two or three or four or five or six people dealing with data. In some cases in the last couple of years they didn’t know what to do with it. And in many cases the coaches will say well it’s, you know, it’s good to have but you’ve got to have your instincts as well. I think ultimately it’s going to affect the substitutional patterns. There’s going to be a coach, assistant coach on the bench that’s going to be looking at the video of the game, everything else. And you’re going to know exactly – ...
To read the transcript, please go to
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
