How Wearable Technology Is Changing the NBA

Image via Complex Original

With the grind of the 82-game season making it difficult for players to do much more than simply play and recover from opening day through the end of the year, the offseason is really when they look to fine-tune their games and get better. A misconception about wearable technology is that it is simply a tool to help reduce injuries through early detection, but in reality the rich data that the devices provide allows teams to do so much more.

A sensor that weighs less than an ounce, and can be casually tucked into a flap on the back of a player’s undershirt, provides information on running speed, leaping height, the force, and precision of one’s cuts, and even potential issues with body asymmetry. Using this data, players can hone in on weak spots in their game and in their bodies, and can also get a better sense of their improvement over time, not only in timed drills involving cones and stopwatches, but also in real-game action. 

With players often training on their own or with other pro ballers away from the watchful eye of their teams, wearing one of these devices provides a way for NBA clubs or the players’ own trainers to monitor their activity level and avoid stress-related injuries that result from overexertion.

Last season, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr caught some flack for resting Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, and Andrew Bogut in a March 13 road meeting with the Denver Nuggets. Golden State lost that game 114-103, bringing their record to 51-13 on the season, but Kerr had the team’s long-term goals in mind. 

For a long time, teams relied on self-reporting to know whether players were feeling banged up, sore, or simply fatigued. But now, using wearables, they can use the data points the devices produce after practices to draw more precise conclusions about the health of their players. The Warriors were an early adopter of the technology, and when those four aforementioned players began to show signs that they were approaching their physical limits in terms of fatigue the team’s director of athletic performance, Keke Lyles, suggested that Kerr sit all of them in what was the first outing of a three-game, four-night stretch in order to avoid injury.

The Warriors went on to win the championship, and all four remained healthy during their grueling postseason run.

If the league and players union decide to allow teams to fit their players with wearables during games, it could not only minimize the risk of injury to players but also maximize the quality of play for viewers. Led by their analytically minded general manager Sam Hinkie, the Philadelphia 76ers are a team at the forefront of most technological and statistical advances in sports. But without the ability to track wearable data during games, the Sixers employ a crude alternative. 

Each game, a member of their training staff sits courtside and carefully monitors the activity level of the five players on the court. This person observes each player’s transition from offense to defense, measuring the time it takes for them to travel from rim to rim. If a player exhibits a lack of energy on multiple trips down the floor, the team’s head coach, Brett Brown, is notified and a substitution is made.

Imagine, though, if instead of this method, which falls at the mercy of observer error, members of the training staff had real-time data flowing into handheld devices on the bench. Instead of simply observing fatigue as it relates to straight-line distance, they could get a better sense of the power with which the players are cutting versus their baseline level, any asymmetry in their motions that could denote minor injury, their heart rate, and countless other important data points.

For most of professional basketball’s history, teams have relied upon individual scouting reports that treat each game as a microcosm of an opposing player’s entire career. “Player X likes the ball at the left elbow and usually makes one of two moves from that position… If you play off of Player Y early in the shot clock, you can goad him into settling for bad shots…” But what if those generalities change not only throughout the course of the game, but also as players become more fatigued?

Maybe Kevin Durant makes different decisions with the ball in his hands when he’s tired. Perhaps there are weaknesses in Tony Allen’s typically stellar defense that can be exploited when he’s reached a certain threshold of physical exertion over the course of a long road stretch. Using the data collected from wearables, teams could become smarter about how they scout their opponents and set their rotations, altering their game plan based upon the expected level of fatigue for individual players on the opposing team.

Wearable technology is the next frontier in sports science, and very soon we’ll all be wondering how teams and players went so long without it. Each of the four items above are very real and very valuable propositions for the NBA as it expands its use of wearables, but at the end of the day promoting the safety and health of the league’s players is the greatest benefit these devices can offer. 

Studies have shown that ligament and soft tissue injuries can be as much as two times as likely to occur once a player has logged at least 30 minutes in a game. That number is staggering, but it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, and obviously teams don’t need wearable technology to tell them that. But the fact of the matter is that teams also cannot afford to keep their best players off the floor for 20 minutes a night. It’s a difficult balancing act that every head coach has to deal with as they navigate the long, grueling NBA season, but wearable technology could render the decisions easier to make.

Imagine if teams could gauge fatigue in real time during games and get feedback on areas of the body that were taking an alarming amount of stress. Think, too, about what a lifetime of data from wearables would look like, and how it could inform teams to make better decisions about their players, based both upon medical history within the sport, as well as the individual history of the player in question—the contributing factors to injuries in their past, their level of fatigue at the moment they occurred, any asymmetry or other potentially rectifiable body issues that could have caused the injury to occur, etc. 

It’s clear that cookie-cutter training strategies are a thing of the past. With teams using specialized cameras to measure every single movement players make while on the floor, doggedly tracking and regulating players’ nutritional intake, and even monitoring their sleep patterns, doesn’t it make sense that they should be listening to their bodies every single time they step out onto the floor using the finest tools at their disposal?

Wearable technology has the power to change the NBA, and that change is coming very, very soon.