[SLAM] Ipad is NBA's best friend (Rockets mentioned)

Full story : http://www.slamonline.com/online/nba/2011/04/ipad-is-nbas-new-best-friend/

Rockets:

Not all players warm up to iPads, or any other tech device, for scouting. John Cho, the video coordinator for the Houston Rockets, said players fall into one of two categories for how they’ll learn all the information team personnel have at their disposal. “A lot of people use written diagrams, and then there are people that learn visually,” Cho said.

When asked if ex-Rocket forward Shane Battier was one of the players who embraced scouting on iPads, Cho revealed that the player well known for his scouting tendencies used an iPad during an early season shooting slump to run through all his attempted field goals. “That was the only time he watched a video,” Cho said of Battier, who was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies just before the February trade deadline.

Battier was reliant on paper scouting reports provided by the Rockets’ statistical analysis department. Cho said Battier’s aversion to video and preference for hard copy material is owed to the 32-year-old’s decade-long tenure in the NBA. Some players who are more experienced feel as though they’ve seen every kind of defensive and offensive scheme, according to Cho. Perhaps that makes it unsurprising he mentioned 23-year-old, second-year forward Terrence Williams being one player who digests as many iPad-enabled scouting reports as he can handle.

Cho acknowledged roughly a quarter of the team’s players don’t use any scouting material that’s provided by the team, whether it’s in video- or paper-form. But the ones who use video are impressed by iPads. “They think it’s amazing that you can give them all their minutes from the last 20 games and have it ready for them in less than an hour, and put it on an iPad,” Cho said.

Yet the Rockets have only two iPads – one allocated to basketball operations and the other to the development side. That means players have to share the tablet borrowed to them by Cho and his two assistants. (One full-time intern performs the primary breakdown of games while the other assistant customizes edits to show opposing players’ tendencies, how guys score points and a percentage breakdown from where each team’s points are derived.) Given that Cho estimated 80 percent of the team’s players have iPads for personal use, he said he thinks it would be beneficial for each player to have one for team use, as well. That way, they could receive personalized edits displaying all their playing time and the players they match up against

 

left out this tidbit mentioned later:

"John Cho of the Rockets mentioned his excitement at another XOS Digital product – a remote logging tool. Patterson explained the system, which is available on laptops and which he and XOS are trying to add for iPad use, allows teams to insert a timeline of the play calls they make each game and input that into a video. This way, teams can view videos of past games with the specific call they made for each possession overlaid on it, perhaps speeding up a team’s ability during a timeout to discover a play from a past game that could work for the one in-progress."

and towards the end:

Garrick Barr said coaches are already enthusiastic to tap the potential of iPads. Barr, a former Phoenix Suns video coordinator, is Founder and CEO of Phoenix-based Synergy Sports Technology, an online statistical and video analysis service to which 29 of the NBA’s 30 teams are subscribed. Coaches can visit the site to review any NBA player and find practically any kind of split stat of him imaginable – how many times he turns to his right to shoot a jump hook on either side of the basket, how often he drives to his left when at the top of the key…all of it accompanied by video shots of the player in that specific situation.

The system is one which Cho uses religiously. He said that if Terrence Williams wants to see Shane Battier’s last 100 defensive stops, he can make that available by going to Synergy’s website, where the company’s staff edits and posts all the video, rather than team video coordinators doing it.

“It used to take us hours and hours and hours of going through a game and picking [Battier's] good defensive clips,” Cho said. Now, they can log onto Synergy’s website, go to Battier’s profile (or that of any other player) and find his forced turnovers.




Overall, i was surprised Twill is singled out as the Rocket who uses it a lot. Maybe that's why he can't figure out the system?

i think it's silly for teams to spend money on Ipads for basketball use only. If many players already have them, why not just upload their videos to them? Or upload them to a site where they can be downloaded by players only?

 

They can lose either one of them, what would be the difference? I would think they'd actually take better care of their personal one than a basketball-only Ipad. Also, who wants to carry two of them around?

 

Probably, but video highlights getting out shouldn't be an issue. Plays and other sensitive material could just be viewed on a protected site and not downloaded. It sounds like the team that already does it basically hands them out for them to keep full time throughout the season, but the Rockets have more to protect. I guess that's why they only have two Ipads.