New NBA player tracking can measure Joel Embiid’s usage like never before

The NBA is always touting its efforts to be on the forefront of the technology revolution across sports, and this season will be no different.

Sportradar, which tracks and manages the league’s data, from statistical information that appears on television broadcasts to specific player data, along with Sony’s Hawk-Eye, the motion capture technology company, is set to revolutionize data usage in coaching, evaluation, and performance. Sportradar is also working with the NBA on a number of other fan engagement fronts, including developing new NBA betting markets for betting operators such as Caesars and FanDuel, along with its recent addition of BetMGM.

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In a video demo with The Inquirer, Sportradar’s Synergy Sports, an analytics-based website geared toward creating real-time data for scouting, coaching and player development, operators showcased the depth and precision of the data.

Synergy Sports automatically generates data through machine learning, which focuses on the use of data and algorithms that mimic human thinking and improves its accuracy over time.

Data will be delivered in less than 30 seconds, thanks to 29 skeletal coordinates on each player’s body, such as wrists and knees through its optical tracking tool. This in turn will allow coaches, front-office personnel, and players to create game planning reports and data on player usage and tendencies.

“Most of these coaches, front office, scouts, players have been using the Synergy Sports platform for 10, if not 20 years, and bringing that familiarity to them in a whole new data set and allowing them to find things where previously you really had to know what you were looking for,” said Mark Silver, Sportradar executive vice president of sports performance. “We get to see every player and the ball, where they are on the court, really, at any given time at 60 frames per second.”

In the demo, the website displays the automated tracking data next to data logged by a person. The human-logged data includes basic information, such as the frequency of isolation drives, post-ups, and number of pick-and-rolls. The automated data can not only measure the frequency at which a player drives to the basket, but also how effective each drive is and how it ranks against other players.

Video cuts of individual situations also are available to accompany the game-planning metric being studied. The exploration tool can save NBA scouting and video departments time and resources.

“It lessens the burden that they have on their internal development, to provide access to this data for all their team members,” Silver said, “as well as that quick connection back to the video, in a video platform that they are familiar working with day in and day out, is seen as a huge upside for our clients in the NBA.”

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As the reigning NBA MVP, Joel Embiid is always at the center of what the Sixers do offensively. Embiid last season had the second-highest usage rate of his career (36.8) while scoring a career-best 33.1 points per game.

Synergy Sports’ player tracking data displays Embiid’s efficacy in pick-and-roll situations, whether he’s rolling to the basket, popping out for a jumpshot, or freeing the ballhandler for an open shot. The data can offer insights on Embiid’s post-up success and how it affects his teammates’ scoring opportunities.

“So not only are we able to see everything time that Joel Embiid posts up, where he takes a shot, but we can see the times where he posted up and he ended up passing it out,” Silver said. “We can see whether he liked to go to his right shoulder left shoulder; there’s a lot that we can look at.”

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Similarly, Tyrese Maxey, known for his ability to push the pace offensively, has his own data sets. Maxey, who is entering a pivotal fourth season with the Sixers, was measured as the fastest Sixers player traveling over halfcourt at 25.4 feet per second last season, according to Synergy Sports’ technology.

Each decision Maxey makes off the dribble — whether settling for a jumper, getting to the rim, or setting up a teammate — is broken down within seconds and ranked among other players across the league in those situations.

Sportradar’s data already has been referenced in television broadcasts this season.

“We’ve seen some examples in the preseason, where an announcer will call something very specific out about a player’s tendency, and we now have the data to go look,” Bryan Spangler, director of engineering, player optimization, and insights at Sportradar, said. “We’ve been able to validate that our data says what the commentator says, and we found that very impressive that they’re able to do this just from from memory while we’re producing the data that then validates it.”

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Said Silver: “While most fans know that pick and rolls are a natural part of the game, [along with] post-ups, how often those are happening in different locations actually tell a really great story of like a team profile and a makeup of how a team likes to operate.”