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Yesterday, the Chicago Sky capped off an incredible 2021 WNBA season, beating the Phoenix Mercury 80-74 to capture the franchise’s first ever championship, three games to one. Kahleah Copper was given Finals MVP honors and Candace Parker succeeded in her quest to bring a title back home alongside the dynamic backcourt duo of Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley.
Every playoff series brought exciting storylines and compelling matchups to a national stage, increasing viewership and engagement throughout the postseason. However, the finals were not the only major event on the WNBA calendar this year. The WNBA may be the most innovative professional sports league, and incorporating a midseason tournament in the form of the Commissioner’s Cup was just another example of how the league is not afraid to be new and different.
If you were watching the first-ever Commissioner’s Cup championship this season between the Seattle Storm and Connecticut Sun, you would certainly have noticed the most recent innovation employed by the league: a technological and broadcasting revolution combining Hawk-Eye, Kinexon, and fan engagement programming.
It started in the rafters, with the implementation of Hawk-Eye. Hawk-Eye is a system of 14 cameras that are used to track player and ball movements throughout a game. It was first employed in cricket and tennis matches, but has now evolved into a useful asset for basketball tracking applications.
Next is Kinexon, a sport-wearables company that utilizes sensors in the waistband of player’s shorts to capture information on speed, agility and athletic impact. This data has been previously used in the G-League to monitor potential injuries, but the WNBA is taking it to a whole new level.
By combining data generated from Hawk-Eye and Kinexon, the Commissioner’s Cup was broadcasting never-before-seen 3D graphical illustrations of statistics and movements from the game, developed live as it was happening.
So what data is actually being generated? And how does it get integrated into the broadcast so efficiently? All in all, approximately 50 people were involved in the execution of this seminal accomplishment, and I had the opportunity to talk to four of the brilliant brains of this operation to dig deeper into what went on behind the scenes.
Christy Hedgpeth is the Chief Operating Officer of the WNBA. She was heavily involved in the entire process and is rightfully extremely proud of this achievement, but she also knows that the first game is only step one of many more to come. Hedgpeth emphasized throughout the interview, saying, “It really is just the beginning.”
Charles Rohlf is the Associate Vice President of Stats Technology Product Development for the NBA. He and Kelsey McDonald, a Stats Technology Product Development Manager for the NBA, gave an in-depth breakdown of what data was being recorded through Hawk-Eye and Kinexon.
When asked about the magnitude of the data collection process, Rohlf said, “What made this so groundbreaking for the WNBA is that, in the NBA our tracking data is incredibly important, but at the end of the day, it’s comprised of one XY coordinate per player per frame, so a single center of mass for that player. Whereas on the WNBA side what made this such an innovation is that we were getting coordinates for every major joint of the body.”
McDonald explained further that there are a whopping 19 body parts/joints being tracked every frame, from head to toe and every limb in between, even including facial features such as eyes and ears. When data is coming in at 60 frames per second, this allows for highly accurate renderings of gameplay to be produced and then shown live to viewers.
During a timeout with 5:44 left to play in the first half, fans got their first glimpse of the animations and statistics created by the Hawk-Eye and Kinexon data. A Storm offensive possession was replayed on the screen, but with mannequin-esque representations of the players instead of a normal replay. Jewell Loyd passed the ball to Breanna Stewart who nailed a deep three over the outstretched arms of Jonquel Jones.
While at first it might have looked like a normal replay, or even something you would see in an NBA2K video game, there are fascinating insights we can take from just that one play. By tracking the location of the ball, we can look at variations in a player’s shot form, the speed with which the pass arrived, and even how well the defender closed out in terms of impacting the shot. Since all of the animations were generated using the in-game data, there is now a plethora of previously unknown information about individual players’ abilities and even the sport of basketball as a whole.
With all of that new data, you might be wondering whether WNBA teams or the public will be able to use the tracking data for scouting or evaluation purposes. Despite my desire to get my hands on the 50 million data points generated from just one game, the analytics team at the WNBA confirmed that they are using it purely for self-assessment purposes to see what can be improved upon in terms of accuracy and efficiency, especially since a sample size of one game would not be too helpful for analysis anyway.
Directly after the animation, the Kinexon information was put to good use, as a graphic showed that Breanna Stewart was leading Seattle with 0.773 miles run so far in the contest. In addition to using those metrics to monitor player load and injury prevention, the WNBA has found a way to use them to increase the fan experience and understanding of the game.
An important aspect of making this type of data-to-broadcast pipeline work is the ability of the announcers to interpret the information and explain it to the viewers. Barney Carleton, a Senior Manager for Broadcast Management at the NBA, commended the effort of Lisa Byington and Lisa Leslie at adapting to this new technology. He said, “When you are interfacing these types of new technologies into a broadcast, it takes a complete buy-in, and you saw that with both Lisa Byington and Lisa Leslie in their awareness, as well as their ability to educate their viewers on what they were seeing.”
He did mention that effectively conveying the data to the viewer is one of the biggest areas of growth for future broadcasts. A major takeaway from the endeavor was how few hiccups there were, given that it was the first ever live integration of this technology. Hedgpeth was not shocked, however, quoting the old adage “luck favors the prepared.” She detailed how much time and effort went into installation, testing, and production of the game and said that it is really no surprise how successful the first trial was.
That success was quantifiable in the viewership and social media buzz. While it is difficult to attribute a rise in spectatorship to any one aspect of the game, Hedgpeth was certain the new technology played a role. She said, “The pregame publicity as well as in-game generated a lot of conversation on socials… [there was an] appreciable uptick in viewership so we are really proud of that. We feel confident that a lot of that can be attributed to the technology giving a really interesting perspective on player movement. We were really encouraged by the engagement.”
Of course not everything said on the internet is positive, and some viewers believe the mannequin replicas could use an aesthetic makeover. But that is exactly the type of information that the WNBA is interested in getting, so that they can make each subsequent integrated broadcast even more insightful and enjoyable.
For a league the size of the WNBA to combine this level of innovative technology and broadcasting is truly remarkable, and like Christy Hedgpeth said, it is just the beginning.
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.