The NBA will begin using Sony’s Hawk-Eye tracking system during the 2023/24 season, the league announced on Thursday in a press release. The technology, which can capture movement in three dimensions, will be used to track both the players and the ball.
While the league’s announcement doesn’t specify exactly how that tracking data will be used during the ’23/24 season, one stated goal is to improve the on-court basketball analytics available to teams.
Perhaps more notably, another one of the NBA’s goals is to use the technology to “enhance officiating by increasing the accuracy of calls and the speed of gameplay.” According to the release, Hawk-Eye may eventually be used to automate the calls for goaltending and out-of-bounds plays, among others.
The Hawk-Eye system is already employed by a number of other sports, including soccer and tennis. Soccer’s most recent World Cup in Qatar used Hawk-Eye to review offside calls, while many tennis tournaments have replaced line judges with automated line calls by Hawk-Eye.
According to Thursday’s announcement, the league has been testing Hawk-Eye at Summer League and at a handful of NBA arenas since 2019. Based on that data collection, the league is satisfied that the system “meets the accuracy and latency needed to provide best-in-class ball and pose tracking to the NBA.”
why?? are they looking to see if a player was looking at a guy he fouled?
There are more than a few instances of fouls being called on players for simply looking (breathing?) at opponents.
Makes you wonder how much more there is to analyze. There’s already so much info out there. Has to be an inflection point.
As for robot officials I’m not sure how I feel. Human refs won’t always get it right, but as long as humans build machines their bias will be built in.
Also one step closer to just running a basketball simulation on a computer. It’s a human game and I lean towards leaving as much humanity in as possible.
People publicly appear to adore Elon MusK embracing his tech, yet ignore his warnings about A.I.
Ironic?
The robots are going to take over the NBA!
imo, the NBA would benefit the most out of all leagues from robot officials. Baseball umps are already surprisingly accurate on balls and strikes and pretty much everything else is reviewable. The main complaint about baseball umps is their attitude.
NFL gets a lot of calls wrong, but they just need faster replay review and more of it. Plus, attitude isn’t really an issue in the NFL. NHL is probably the best of all four sports with regards to officiating.
NBA on the other hand, misses a lot of calls and also has quite a few referees with attitude problems. Plus there are so many calls in a game and so much arguing/complaining from the coaches and players. And every few years flopping crops up as an issue. No idea how it would work, but bring on the robot refs in the NBA. Might be able to remove “star calls” and other nonsense like that.
I just want there to be no more awful calls like the Kevin Durant is still in bounds one. When he was out of bounds for the entire play.
I have no inside info on this but I have to imagine refs are instructed to manage the narrative of the game in some ways.
The NBA has an incentive to give stars calls. They bring in revenue. They have incentive not to call every travel or bring the game to a halt. The refs for better or for worse are writing the story.
So yes they are missing calls, but the pace is faster and some of it is likely intentional. My 2 cents
Sure, why not? A.I. refs > NBA refs
Who makes the A.I??
AI
Allen Iverson.
People do know the NBA will run the A.I right
Will the Sony system be used to document and enforce the blatant traveling that takes place in the NBA?
I would love to see it call moving screens. It feels 75% of all screens set are actually illegal, moving screens.
I don’t even really care about traveling anymore..as far as picking up the dribble and taking 3 or 4 steps before shooting. What annoys the heck out of me is carrying the ball. Like between every single bounce guys have their hand UNDER the ball and change direction before the next dribble. It’s so accepted now that college kids are getting away with it.
Traveling is such a joke in the NBA now and has been since Jordan, Magic and Kobe were given carte blanche to do it.
Dey took er jerbs