Innovation in the NBA
Basketball is my favorite sport to play, and I’ve loved watching the NBA, especially the Knicks, for years. Like most viewers, I watched the NBA casually, watching for the basketball itself and not really thinking about the business side of the league and what goes on behind the scenes. Obviously, I knew that the league was changing rapidly; the stadiums, equipment, performance, and player health are all in a state that is vastly better than what it was five years ago, let alone ten or twenty, but I was unaware of the specifics regarding how the league was actually changing. Recently, the league has innovated tremendously in an extremely short period of time to resume the season in the “bubble” in Disney World, with strict protocols to protect players from COVID-19 and high-tech screening and safety measures, but in this post I am going to focus more on what the NBA was doing in the pre-COVID times.
I read articles that summed up innovation in the NBA on a pretty general level, but I was really exposed to what the NBA was doing when Joe Tsai, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets and an alumni of my high school, The Lawrenceville School, invited the basketball team to the Nets stadium. After playing a game on the court, we were given a private tour of the Nets’ facilities in the Barclays Center and the practice courts. Though in awe of just being in an NBA stadium and practice center, a lot of what they showed me really stuck with me. For one, they had top-of-the line player recovery systems. They had masseuses and technologies like massage guns, smart-foam rollers, and compression boots to make sure players’ muscles were constantly performing at their maximum capacity and to minimize cramps, tears, and soreness. They also had cryo-chambers for some more intensive recovery. Before this technology, the most players would do was stretch, and obviously this led to many unfortunate injuries, and while basketball still isn’t completely injury-free, a lot of potential injuries have been prevented or dampened by these technologies.
Moving on to player skills and conditioning, the Nets and the rest of the NBA have innovated as well. With apps and software to track the path and arc of the ball, Nets shooting coaches can fine tune players’ shots to yield higher percentages and more consistent in-game shooting. Teams also regularly make use of other apps to work on players’ ball handling and passing, which record stats and provide feedback. Software is extremely useful, but teams also incorporate some new hardware into their training, whether it’s a weighted or grip-less basketball, rims with a smaller diameter, or impaired-vision goggles to truly make practice harder than the games.
On the strength and conditioning side, workouts are much more personalized and researched than before, where players did the same workouts over and over again. Nowadays, coaches push the players to use new workout routines involving bands and other technologies to catch their bodies off-guard. They also make sure that the workouts keep in mind the injuries the players are more prone to, and they build workout plans around injury-prevention. The classic squat-bench-deadlift combo is proven to yield results, but for basketball, it’s important to mix up workouts both for health and performance.
While skills are important in high school and college, at the professional level, where everyone possesses incredible skills, the mental aspect of the game needs to be trained and improved just as much. One example of how teams train their players to have better reaction speeds is by using a display with lights that turn on randomly in different locations, and players have to move to touch them as quickly as possible. A tool that is often overlooked that can simulate NBA games well and provide opportunities to better players’ decision making is basketball video games such as NBA2k. Though not completely realistic, the software in those video games have improved so much that many players accredit their performance in part to playing 2K. Mental health is increasingly more important in the league, with players like Kevin Love leading the charge to raise awareness about the detriments of mental illness on players, so teams have resources to help with that, too.
These are some of the innovations that teams have generated to focus on who makes them money, the players, and for good reason. But the league itself has innovated incredibly to draw more revenue and build the league’s global reputation and fanbase. As Sports Illustrated said in this article, “If the NFL has developed a reputation for stodgy traditionalism, the NBA has done the exact opposite, innovating its way to status as the fast-changing league of the future.” Social media isn’t exactly a new innovation, but the way the NBA has used it to increase viewership is definitely innovative. Global camps and showcases aren’t exactly new, but the presentation and performance of the events have increased to portray the NBA as more attractive and exciting. And the fan experiences, from interactive technologies to games at stadiums to exclusive performances and products, have changed so much over the years, showing the NBA’s willingness to innovate alongside the rest of the world.
Like I said before, the NBA is one of the leagues that has overcome the pandemic the best with their decision making, planning, and execution. In the future, nobody knows what the league is going to do next to innovate and bring the game into the future, but no matter what it is, rest assured that the NBA will not remain static and stuck in the past.