Finding the ghost in the shell

“I don’t believe in statistics. There are too many factors that can’t be measured. You can’t measure a ballplayer’s heart.” Red Auerbach.

“The amount of points you score doesn’t determine whether you are playing good or bad. Your point indicator is never an indicator of how you play. It’s how hard you work and how good of a teammate you are.” Caitlin Clark. 

Two quotes, one explanation of what makes basketball what it is, what’s at the core of the game. Basketball isn’t about box-scores or cold, lifeless numbers. It’s about the plays, the set plays that are ingrained in your brain and define future tactics and game philosophy. Coach Auerbach may not have believed in numbers in the 60s, there wasn’t much to do with them anyway and they weren’t able to illustrate the whole story. But as technology has evolved and the sport has grown, new possibilities have emerged and we can now use data to tell the bigger story, the things our brain would see but couldn’t quite put a finger on. In a sense, data is now able to get to what is in a ballplayer's heart. 

Data isn’t just a factual observation anymore, it’s the insight that transforms averages into greatness.

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XY tracking and Events, a rich data source

XY tracking allows a frame by frame spatial mapping of the players and court to better understand what is happening at all times. It’s the industry standard that we take to the next level by tracking continuously all 10 players and the ball, be it on the broadcast feed or not, all from a single broadcast feed. We go a step further with our AI-powered proprietary technology by linking this data to key offensive or defensive play-by-play events, such as shots, steals, rebounds… We added an extra layer, Dynamic Events. If XY tracking is the sentence and events are the punctuation of a game, Dynamic Events is the story these two tell.

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Dynamic Events, the winning margin

In our ecosystem, Dynamic Events is the bond between raw tracking data and standard game events. XY tracking generally creates millions of data points per game which can often be complicated and time-consuming to go through for analysts. Dynamic Events filters through all this to create actionable insights.

This translates into On Ball and Off Ball Actions

"We're not just using data to look backward. We use data to project forward." Daryl Morey

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On Ball Actions, the HOW behind every action

Traditional events tend to tell you what a player did. Player X got a rebound, took a shot and got a foul. Dynamic Events goes a step further by showing HOW that happened. Was the drive created off a screen or in isolation? How much space was given by the defender? Was the shot highly contested? We link the tracking data to each ball action in order to transform a simple box score into a full story. Combined with off-ball actions, analysts can follow a possession from the screen that created the advantage all the way up to the shot that came from it. This allows analysts to compare players based on similar situations rather than on raw totals. For coaches, it allows them to see if the successful shot came from the system or from individual creation. 

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Off Ball Actions, the unseen game

On ball actions are only half of the story. Where traditional events log what the player who scored did, Dynamic Events can track the tactical work of the players who aren’t on the ball. Thanks to our tracking data, we can categorize and map off ball runs to identify a player's contribution beyond his ball handling. How many useful crashes(*) did a player do during a game? Did a screen lead to a basket? Did a defender manage to do a successful boxout? This tactical insight allows teams to go further in their analysis and properly identify who is executing their drills correctly and bringing that extra edge to a play. We take the tracking data much further, avoiding the need to manually annotate the data.

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A deeper look into the unseen

• Picks: the screen behind the play:

Almost every half-court possession runs through a screen, but traditional box scores never actually record them. Dynamic Events changes that by identifying each pick, who set it, who used it and where it happened and adding much more context to these events. With over 20 attributes it is possible to identify what the screener did after setting the screen. What type of defense was put on the screener and what was his defender's depth at that moment. Analysts can see much more clearly who consistently frees up teammates, how often do successful plays start by a screen. If you are a scout, this shows the things that very rarely make it to the highlight reels but actually creates an open look.

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• Drive: not just a dribble to the rim:

Drives are quite obvious to count but it becomes quite difficult to judge their usefulness. Two players can both have 10 drives but offer very different values to a play. With Dynamic Events attributes it’s possible to attach the situation to each drive: where it started, what was the defense’s reaction to it, how it ended, did a defender stunt on the drive. This allows a way to better identify if a player simply got to the rim or if he brought much more, like bending a defense, or creating the opportunity for an open 3. This helps coaches better identify which drives came from a designed play or from one-on-one creations. It also helps to identify players who create gravity around them when they initiate a drive.

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• Boxout and Crash: A deeper understanding of the rebound battle:

Box scores count the rebounds, but they don’t clock the work that led to a successful one or to a great defense that prevented one. Dynamic Events attributes capture who executed the boxout. If it’s a defensive player, did he keep his matchup from getting the rebound? Who crashed and from where? As mentioned before, highlights don’t show who does the dirty work, our solution does. Coaches can better identify who is executing their drills properly and scouts can find the players that have that ”heart” that Coach Auerbach mentioned. 

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These three examples are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to everything that happens in the shadows.

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Our Dynamic Events

We are continuously adding new advanced in-game actions to show what players do beyond the highlight reels.

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