This smart basketball tracks data on all your shots. It could be heading for the NBA

However, this is not the first time the NBA has tested connected balls in the summer league. Fifty years ago, the first attempt was flattened. And while the technology has improved significantly since then, there remains a major hurdle when it comes to convincing NBA players that basketball with sensors isn’t acting differently than before.

I went to Sin City and spoke with stakeholders around the NBA, from teams and players to league staff and SIQ braintrusts, to get exclusive information on how this technology works, how the testing was done, and whether we should realistically expect “smart basketball”, where “smart basketball” will make its debut soon.

The evolution of design

There are many nuances and variations within this large market, but basic basketball construction remains the same for decades.

A combination of rounded surfaces and precisely placed grooves, basketball is intended to bounce evenly with a single minor exception. It is a small “dead” spot at the point where the ball’s air valve is inserted to maintain airtightness. When the ball is dribbled directly into its valve spot, the way the ball rebounds will change slightly. For decades, players at all levels of the sport have simply embraced this slight imperfection as part of the game.

When the NBA first tested connected balls from multiple vendors in the Summer League in 2019, even the small adjustments they made caused some issues.

First of all, connecting the sensor to the inner wall of the ball caused dribbling concerns.

“When you place the sensor inside the basketball cascade, you’re creating a (second) dead spot like you’re already using the valve,” says Maximillian Schmidt, co-founder and managing director of Kinexon, a sports data and sensor company, one of the NBA vendors tested in 2019. (Additional) Dead spots cannot be prevented no matter how small they are. ”

Also, the sensor weighed too much. This is primarily to ensure that both the technical limitations of the time and that the NBA’s first question captures both the ball’s position and the “touch” event of the ball. Players noticed both dead spots and extra weight.

Still, several parties involved in these blinds 2019 tests say they actually did relatively well.

“People said there was a sensor when the ball didn’t have a sensor, and people said there was no sensor when the ball was there,” says Dayveon Ross, co-founder and CEO of another vendor, The Shottracker, which was tested in 2019. “So it was kind of 50-50. That’s exactly what you want.”

However, these 2019 tests did not ultimately result in permanent NBA adoption of connected balls. The ball feel issue was part of that. That was why the league also wanted to invest more resources from that time into computer vision programs. This could potentially collect much of the same position data as a connected ball without physical hassle.