BOSTON (CBS) — The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference hit a milestone last weekend, as terrific minds and ideas came together for the 10th year of the event at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
The growth of the conference has been remarkable since its launch by Rockets GM Daryl Morey and Kraft Sports Group vice president Jessica Gelman back in 2006. One hundred people took part in the first conference back in 2016 on the MIT campus, but in 2016, there were over 3,900 attendees at the two-day event with a star-studded cast of panelists that included Billy Beane, Gary Bettman, Bill James, among many others.
Several influential individuals with local ties also took part in the event, including Celtics co-owners Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca, assistant GM Mike Zarren, Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio and team chairman Jonathan Kraft.
While all four major pro sports were covered on a variety of panels, there were several cutting edge ideas and technology presented on the basketball front. Here are a few of the major takeaways taken from those discussions.
Wearable technology is the next frontier – Technology companies such as Catapult and Zebra were featured prominently throughout the conference as organizations from several sports look more into monitoring the movement of their performers with devices that detect heart rate and how the body is handling stress.
Most sports, including the NBA have not approved this kind of technology being used in game action yet, so most teams been limited to using them in practice, but many key figures in basketball, including Mike Zarren on the Basketball Analytics panel are hopeful that the next step is approaching, since the usefulness of practice data is limited.
“You need to have players wear them,” Zarren explained. “This is where I get in trouble if I say anything more.”
One area in which NBA teams have already taken advantage of new SportVu player tracking (with camera installed in all 30 NBA arenas) is with the training regime of players. For example, distance traveled is something SportVu can measure for players during a game and that provides valuable data for trainers to utilitize
“Should you train to run three miles or five miles?” Zarren asked. “Those are really different training regimes, right? We didn’t know until we installed the [SportVu] cameras during the playoffs in 2010, how far you guys were running during the games.”
Brian Kopp of Catapult Sports expanded on how that data has trickled down to members of the coaching staff and help them manage their personnel.
“People assumed that when you had new data it’s going to flip everything on its head,” Kopp said. “And that was never the point. There are a lot of coaches out there that are great at their job. It’s really just furthering and advancing what you already know in a different way. Maybe challenging you on a couple things, but mostly reinforcing what you already know.”
With conversations like these, most teams from all four major pro sports had representatives in attendance at SSAC, a trend that has continued for several years now. Franchises are always forward thinking and want to now what’s next.
Brian Robb covers the Celtics for CBS Boston and contributes to NBA.com, among other media outlets. You can follow him on Twitter@CelticsHub.
