) Pro basketball's upgrades go far beyond the video gimmicks and statistical analyses that allow coaches to fully develop their paranoia. The prevailing tech rage has grown to include perks for those who scout teams and potential players, the grumpy refs, current players and fans. Of course, the tipping point for any 2006 NBA tech report is the league's new (and, yeah, controversial) basketball.
In case you've been able to avoid the caterwauling, many prominent players whose union was not asked to provide an official stamp of approval have spoken out against Spalding's new synthetic model. The rookie rock is too sticky, they say. Then it's not sticky enough when it gets wet, they say.
Players say they'll miss more shots and commit more turnovers than they did with the NBA's venerable, Spalding-produced leather ball. And so on. The complainers include Miami Heat center Shaquille O'Neal, whose dexterity requirements are limited to jamming a ball through the rim after a post move and using it to chip paint during a free throw.
Interestingly, the small body of statistical (shooting percentage, scoring and turnovers) evidence from exhibition games and two weeks of real play contradicts the players' claims. Last Thursday, for example, five of the six NBA teams that suited up scored 110 or more points.
(Randy Belice/NBAE / Getty Images)
According to Touhey, Spalding's popular Top-Flite 1000 ball has been used at the collegiate and high school levels for 14 years. He also reminds us that the NCAA tournament switched to a microfiber composite built by Wilson in 2003. This suggests that many of the on-court critics have played with synthetic basketballs for quite a while.
But if they were fond of the leather NBA basketball, why would the league make a change? NBA commissioner David Stern has been beating the drum for bounce consistency. This quest for perfection may have been necessary because all leather basketballs are not created equally.
Leather basketballs which are born with more slickness than the league's PR machine also take a while to break in. By contrast, synthetic models provide bounce consistency and are ready to go in terms of grip right out of the box. Touhey said that as the NBA's partner, the forward-thinking folks at Spalding have been experimenting with different ways to replicate a broken-in NBA leather ball for several years.
To that end, a version of the TF-1000 (which now offers something called ZK technology) was offered eight years ago. "It does get a little sticky," Touhey said of Spalding's garden-variety ZK composite. "This new material is actually ZK enhanced.
" A major selling point of Spalding NBA's ball is moisture management, a technological feature that encourages the invading sweat to spread out and die quickly. "The (composite) has a better grip when wet than other balls," said Touhey, basing his claim on additional high-tech evidence. "We use a machine that measures the coefficient of friction.
" There you have it. "Coefficient of friction" certainly seems more scholarly and plausible than anything Shaq has given us. By the way, the ball has two interlocking panels, instead of the traditional eight panels that can create a traffic jam for a shooter's guide hand.
An advance scout is an employee of a NBA franchise who provides strategic reconnaissance on upcoming foes. Our tour guide for how technology assists in negotiating the advance-scout maze is a scout currently employed by an NBA team. "If you don't like to stay up until 4 a.
m. preparing reports, you'd better not take an advance job," he said. Did he say 4 a.
m.? Well, it seems that technology has done little to make this guy's job easier.
For the sake of our series, he disagrees. As an explanation, let's take a look at what may be the most important aspects of the advance scout's job. "I'm there to determine frequency of action and to steal the calls," he said.
Action is scout code for offensive sets or plays and defensive-rotation tendencies. But plays and defensive habits can be broken down by video the scouting team records in-house and hands over to coaches. What makes the advance man vital to the process is his audio access to the verbal cues of the upcoming opponents' coach or point guard.
Without a verbal cue for your defense, just looking at a play on a video screen has minimal value. Unfortunately, the league has allowed teams to reduce the number of court-adjacent seats for media members and scouts. "I have a sound booster in my laptop that eliminates peripheral noise, giving me a better opportunity to hear what the call is," said the scout, who uses his trusty laptop to review a DVD of the game he just watched in person.
"Binoculars come in handy if you don't have a seat near the court. And it helps if you have the ability to read lips." Most of these DVDs are supplied by the team's video department, which records future opponents for the six games leading up to the big showdown.
On average, the video guys will track 25 games per week, cranking out six DVD copies of each. The copies are divided up among coaches and players. These recording-studio sessions do not include work required by the club's player personnel department, another around-the-clock bunch.
"Technology is really important in what we do," Gary Sacks, director of scouting for the Los Angeles Clippers, said. "But the information we gather must be disseminated in a way that makes it productive." Sacks said using computers and the Internet to create a data base for more than 100 draft prospects is nothing new.
But advancements have enabled teams to make this process "more thorough and concise." He said it won't be long before prospect data bases include immediate video access packaged alongside a player's statistical and personal information. For now, separate video breakdowns of draft prospects usually are produced in-house.
Independent companies can generate specific sequences (jump-shot mechanics, etc.) for a single prospect, but Sacks said outsourcing could provide other NBA subscribers with a window into which players a team is zeroing in on. "Doing it in-house gives you proprietary control," he said.
Just like players and coaches who review and contrast on-court performances, referees use DVDs and laptops in self-critiques. After the horn causes both backboards to light up at the end of the opening half, referees check their work via laptops and DVD access in the dressing room. Postgame plane rides are used for more laptop review, followed by detailed reports that land in the NBA office before the ref's flight is on its final approach.
Video study by the league office determines among other things which referees work the early playoff rounds and the Finals. So where does all of this hi-hoop-tech stuff leave you? Well, fan benefit through stat-related technology on the Internet is obvious.
But this season, the number-crunching has become a bit fussier. Lenovo, the league's new PC and laptop provider, has created a statistical program that tracks plus-minus efficiency in groupings of players. A couple of clicks on NBA.
com gives fans access to which lineup the rankings go from five players on down to a single player had the greatest statistical productivity that night. "A lot of teams do similar plus-minus numbers," an NBA assistant coach said. "And that can give you an objective look at who's performing.
But we really don't need raw data to know who's playing well and who isn't." Right, they've studied the video. When all is said, written and done, the co-stars of the greatest NBA technological advancement may be owners and the Internet.
For evidence of this Internet assist we offer Mark Cuban, who couldn't have purchased the Dallas Mavericks without it. Veteran columnist Randy Hill is a frequent FOXSports.com contributor.
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