Basketball has been around for about 140 years, but the rules haven’t changed all that much. However, that doesn’t mean that basketball is in a state of stagnation. While the sport itself hasn’t evolved, various pieces of technology have helped to revolutionize the industry.
Today, we take a look at the key technologies that have had an impact on the NBA.
Wearable technology
Teams are always looking to get the most of their players, which is why many sports brands have helped develop some of the most iconic sneakers ever created in the 1990s. These shoes aim to provide an accurate reading of everything the player is doing out there on the court. This is why every single player in the NBA is equipped with wearable tech.
Wearable tech can keep an eye on how fast and far a player is moving, their heart rate and their breathing rate. All this information can be used by teams to make a tactical decision about what is happening on the court.
In addition, a lot of this wearable tech is feeding data through to stats companies. Most of the time, this data is going to be used for gambling, although many teams will also buy this information to get a read on their future opponents.
Wearable tech has ensured that we have a better overview of what is happening on the courts than ever before, and it has resulted in players being able to perform better than ever before.
Online gambling
Online gambling hasn’t exactly had a major impact on the actual way in which the sport is played, but it has certainly helped to inject a lot of money into the sport.
Basketball, like all sports, has never been a stranger to gambling. Granted, sports betting has been illegal in many places over the last few decades, but gambling was still happening and every week people across the land were looking for NBA betting tips. Each week, millions and millions of dollars would be gambled on basketball games. However, if you wanted to place a bet, you either needed to go to a sportsbook or take the additional risk of placing an illegal bet.
Online gambling has changed this. Tech has improved to the point where people can easily gamble from the comfort of their own homes in many states. In fact, most online sportsbooks now feature live gambling, meaning that you can gamble while the game is in action. You’ve never been able to do that with physical sportsbooks!
Mobile devices
Mobile devices have really helped on the court performance front. Nowadays, there is barely a pro sport out there where mobile devices are not being used on the sidelines.
In the past, all the tactical stuff would have been on whiteboards and the like. While this worked, it wasn’t really all that convenient. Now, coaches just write things on a tablet computer. It is much easier to edit whatever is on the tablet computer and to quickly share information with players. Perhaps more importantly — it is a whole lot more difficult for the other team to see what is happening on that tiny computer screen. This means that coaches do not have to worry about the opposition getting a sneaky peak at the tactics.
Instant replays
Instant replays have completely shaken up the sport. In the past, the ref could easily have made mistakes on the court. They had no way to check any of the more dubious decisions. Nowadays? Well, referees are still human and they will make mistakes, but instant replay tech being used in the sport has made it a whole lot easier to reverse those decisions.
We are positive that the introduction of instant replay technology is something that pretty much every fan of the sport celebrated. After all, just about every team has fallen victim to poor decision making on the court, and this can prevent a lot of it from happening. While it hasn’t been completely eliminated, at least it isn’t happening as much as it did in the past. That’s always a plus, right?
SportVU
If you love being able to see a tactical overview of what has happened on the court, you have SportVU to thank for that.
This revolutionary piece of technology utilizes cameras all over the sports arena. It is watching players, keeping tabs on how they move and where they are shooting from. This provides a good representation of how the teams are playing, as well as how certain players are performing on the courts.
We have seen a lot of television companies lean into the use of SportVU to give their analysis. However, these are not the only people that have benefitted from this technology. All the teams review their SportsVU data to see how they performed on the court and whether there are any improvements they can make next time. They can also see the SportVU data for competing teams, and get an idea of how to improve from there too.
Final thoughts
There is a lot of technology being used in the NBA. Some of it has improved the sport and the way that players perform, such as SportVU, while other tech has benefitted the fans, such as online casinos. We can’t wait to see how new technologies will impact the NBA industry in the coming years. We are sure there is more right around the corner.
