In 2016, the National Basketball Association (NBA) tournament witnessed the best record done by a team in a regular season. The Golden States Warriors (GSW) finished the regular season with a record of 73-9 (win-loss). They broke the previous 72-10 record established in 1996 by the Michael-Jordan-led Chicago Bulls. In that 2016 season, GSW’s point guard Stephen Curry set the record for most 3-point attempts made, with 402 made 3’s. Before that, no player has made 300 three-pointers in a season. The Warriors did not win the trophy that year, but they went on to become champions in the following 2 seasons.
It was not only the talent of the players and coaching staff (which, of course, played a big role in the historic run) that propelled the success of the franchise. Behind the curtain, it was the technology and analytics that the GSW leveraged that helped them transform into such a dominant sports team. The Warriors was one of the first teams to adopt tracking technologies and analytics (Tina, 2017). From 2010, they have installed SportsVU, a camera tracking technology that utilizes computer vision, to track what’s happening on the court. The tool provides a rich dataset of the movement and coordinates of players, and the analytics team and coaching staff can use this data to drive decision-making processes. GSW was one of the best teams to utilize the technology, leading them to achieve the 2016 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference award of “Best Analytics Organization” (Fahey, 2016).
The technology-immersed world of sports
Embracing the use of technology is not only just a competitive advantage for sports teams anymore; it has become a do-or-die thing, and it has touched every branch of sports. Baseball, for example, was probably the first sport to popularize the concept of sports analytics, with the publishing of Michael Lewis’s book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” (2003) and the later movie adoption “Moneyball” (2011). Nowadays, the Major League Baseball (MLB) teams use Statcast, a tracking technology to gather real-time data, including pitch velocity, exit velocity, launch angle and more (Becoming a Baseball Analytics Expert, 2023).
Wearable technologies have also been used heavily by sports teams. In the National Football League (NFL), teams are using Catapult, a wearable tracking device that could track all performance and physical condition indicators of players (Becker, 2019). The same wearable technology is applied in football to capture player movements, actions on the field and physical exertions, along with other metrics such as player workload , movement efficiency, and game-specific physical profiles (Ambler, 2024).
Not just team-performance enhancement, technologies have been invasive in every aspect of sports. Teams have been using analytics in scouting to pinpoint how much an athlete is worth by looking at player’s longevity, heart rate, natural health condition and prediction on how these impact the player’s career (Hanchett, 2012). Artificial intelligence has been incorporated in football’s Goal-Line Technology to help referees determine goals. Virtual Reality (VR) have been used to simulate training environment for athletes without physical strain, and Augmented Reality (AR) technology has been enforcing fans’ engagement with live stadium tours or interactive gaming during live events. The list goes on and on.
The future: Super athletes, super teams, and super sporting?
The past 50 years have witnessed incredible sports feats by athletes and teams. A marathon finished under 2 hours was deemed impossible, until Eliud Kipchoge did it in 2019. Arnand Duplantis, a Swedish pole vaulter, broke his own world record for the 9th time this Olympics. Great athletes like Lebron James, Ronaldo and Novak Djokovic keep pushing the age limit for a competitive professional sports career. The GSW’s 73-9 record, Real Madrid’s three-peat of the Champions League, Man City’s 100-point season are among impossible feats achieved recently. All of these amazing sports achievements have been greatly assisted with the help of technology advancement. And now, when we step into the age of another technology breakthroughs with AI, will the world witness the making of super athletes, surpassing Lebron James and Cristiano Ronaldo?
References
Tina. (2017, November 9). How analytics drives the Golden State Warriors. Chartio. https://chartio.com/blog/how-analytics-drives-the-golden-state-warriors/
Fahey, A. (2016, March 13). Warriors earn “Best Analytics Organization” award at 2016 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. NBA.com. https://www.nba.com/warriors/news/warriors-earn-best-analytics-organization-award-2016-mit-sloan-sports-analytics-conference
Becoming a baseball analytics expert. (2023, August 15). Kore Baseball Products. https://www.korebaseball.com/blogs/blog/mastering-baseball-analytics-a-comprehensive-guide-to-analyzing-and-interpreting-game-data
Becker, J. (2019b, October 21). How analytics is changing sports. American University Online. https://programs.online.american.edu/mssam/sports-management-masters/resources/how-analytics-is-changing-sports
Ambler, W. (2024, July 3). Sports Analytics: What is it & How it Improves Performance? – Catapult. Catapult. https://www.catapult.com/blog/what-is-sports-analytics#Applications-of-Sports-Analytics
Hanchett, D. (2012). Playing Hardball With Big Data: How Analytics Is Changing The World of Sports. EMC, pp. 2. Retrieved from https://www.emc.com/collateral/article/137534-sports-analysis.pdf.
Hey I really liked your post and I find the topic of the integration of AI and tech into sports really interesting and actually wrote my blog post on a similar topic but specifically about AI in football. I also discussed how tech and AI provide an increase to performance across the sport and I really enjoyed your reference to several different examples of how new tech can revolutionise a sport. Despite the increased performance that generally comes with the adoption of new tech I am also worried that some of the essence of sport may be removed as we continue employ more tech at every step of the way, specifically AI. Teams are now even letting AI dictate their teams tactics and I’m worried that this might remove some of the uniqueness and unpredictability of sport. I’d be interested to hear your opinion on it and if you think the scenario may be different in some of the sports that you discussed.