Raptors hope technology leads to success with new multimedia analytic board

Back in the day, a basketball player might sneak into a gym to work on his shot late at night.

Now a Toronto Raptor can do it and have a machine verbally and visually track his shot. And then file it away for future comparison.

The NBA franchise showed off its new multimedia analytic board Tuesday, a giant screen that stretches 37 metres long and three metres high on a wall alongside one of its practice courts at the OVO Athletic Centre.

"My original thought was that we could have a Jumbotron courtside so that we could be doing things in practice and want to teach immediately," said Raptors coach Nick Nurse. "So we could stop it, say 'Rewind it. We want to look at that play again.' And teach and coach immediately on the spot."

That original idea soon mushroomed.

The Toronto brain trust wasted little time coming up with other material to add to the technological pipeline. On Tuesday, the board showed the shot data from Noah Basketball dubbed Noahlytics, which uses computer-vision technology and proprietary algorithms.

Not a sports guy, but even I can appreciate the <a href="https://twitter.com/Raptors?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Raptors</a>’ slick new high-tech analytics board! It’s a 120-feet, 14-million pixel display consisting of 448 individual boards that, alongside cameras above each rim, offers in-depth, real-time data on each player’s performance.