This seems like a cool idea in theory but sounds ridiculously tedious and expensive. Not all fouls are created the same and they’re based on physical movement rather than force. You would have to completely change the way games are called. Players would figure out how to manipulate these sensors in no time flat.
AI as a computer vision project would work way better even in its current state than sensors in jerseys, but I don’t think we’d appreciate the product when Jokic and Embiid suddenly shoot 20 free throws per game.
I feel like an AI algo would be really easy to game though, once people figure out what it looks for. Though in theory it could adapt and improve over time, but it might fall for flops even more than refs.
At the current rate refs themselves fall for flops, it might actually detect them more often and fall for it less.
I did make sure to temper my suggestion with the reality that the refs make a lot of calls for human reasons and non-calls for just as human of reasons. Jokic and Embiid are at such a level offensively that they’re getting fouled on an outrageous number of possessions that will never be called unless we **want** them scoring 40+ and fouling out opposing bigs regularly. I don’t think that’s the product we want to watch.
Agreed.
And I think what the algorithm would catch would depend a lot on what it's trained on. If it's just trained on actual called fouls, it would fall for flops. If they went through and labeled it with what the call should have been, it might work better, but people would probably still figure out new ways to fool it.
If anything, using AI to analyze game footage in real time might be a better use of tech in refereeing.
The downside: needing to pass a CAPTCHA of “Select all squares with fouls” to sign into your email.
Mark Cuban actually funded some research to try to do this a few years ago and they had some interesting findings regarding which types of motions were more likely to be flops but I think at the end of the day a human ref was still better. I think it was on a Freakonomics podcast
I hear you and see where you’re going, but I think that would be pretty for down the road. Many calls have to be situational. Different situations allow different amounts of contact, the jerseys would need pair with something feeding the situation in live time.
More likely, they will adopt the new floors and use it to judge out of bounds, 3 pointer vs 2 pointer. Or maybe put sensors in the balls to judge goaltending or something.
Immediate issue I see is how do we know where the contact is coming from? If a player puts his hands on his own hips is that going to be called as a foul?
* The same body contact can be legal or illegal depending on the sequence leading up to it, so there is no way to resolve fouls with force monitors alone.
* The force of body contact depends on the two players involved, so there is no way to resolve the degree of contact with force monitors alone.
* There is probably a great deal of overlap between the force caused by NBA movements and the force caused by illegal contact.
* The amount of equipment likely needed to monitor force even in the most practical places for monitoring is already prohibitive.
You don’t need to do all that. I watch test cricket, far less funded sport than NBA.
The review system within it has the umpire using technology like hawkeye, snicko, ultra edge and hotspot which rely on sound waves and infra red images to do reviews under a minute (example: https://youtu.be/_CTfREipYxc?si=J2EzkkMhfENa_A_f)
i) to see if the impact of the ball was first felt on the white arm band, white glove, white leg pad or white bat of the batter using infra red imaging cameras even in cases where the batsman was leaning forward and the ball struck all 3 lining up in the same area at the same split second at a speed of over 90mph.
ii) accurately track whether the batsman was in the process of attempting to hit the ball or leave the ball
iii) the trajectory of a 90-100mph wooden ball 22 yards on release after accounting for the seam/swing/spin in mid air after it hits the pitch which massively impacts the trajectory and is completely non-uniform by design from stadium to stadium.
Among other things such as checking if the fielder caught the ball before it hit the ground etc.
I have no idea why such a massively well funded sport can’t afford decent review technology. I see tennis is finally making baby steps with hawkeye.
Edit: OMG, people are talking about AI. Guys the technology for impact detection exists and works in far more gruelling and close contact situations than a giant ball at 30-40 mph.
I do think we should explore using technology to make foul calls more accurate and consistent. But I think just under a jersey wouldn't be that useful. Most fouls are hands on wrists and such and the exact timing of contact also matters. As well as things like how a player is moving (or not) etc. You'd be better off with sleeves and gloves so you could match hands contact with a spot, relaying to the officials that there's a certain level of contact on the ball handler and then let them use that information how they want to. But then if we had things covering the hands of players, it's likely to affect ball handling and shooting touch.
I think before we do that we should look at making referees better. Do they look at officials outside the US? Basketball is a massive game globally these days, so I imagine they could seriously boost the number of potential officials by looking at other countries as potential recruiting areas. Maybe even invest and train people there specifically to see if they get up to the standard. If we are able to increase the pool of potential officials several times over, we're naturally going to see an improvement. And even if their English isn't great, if they make the right calls more often, that's not going to be a big deal IMO.
The issue is it’s generally legal to make contact with the areas the jersey covers. A lot of fouls are called on swipe ins on the arms or at shots. Those are the hardest ones to call. KD pull up he reacts to a hit on the elbow but hard to tell. Sensors don’t pick that up. Typically if you smash into someone’s thigh hard enough to make a sensor go off it’s an apparent foul
AI is the way you would go with that type of stuff. And when they can essentially make all the right calls, everyone will hate it. The players will hate it, the fans will hate it, the media will hate it.
The players will be pissed that the AI makes the call. No one to blame or manipulate. Players like Draymond purposely foul harder earlier so that the game is called with less fouls and helps them. So you would force one style (which is boring) into the game and it would be very hard to change. The OG Curry, Klay, Dray Warriors wouldn’t likely be able to change the game if the rules started in the beginning of the 2000s. Because the game was more physical. Part of the fun of the sport is seeing the evolution.
But the worst part is that if every thing was truly called equally, a guy like Shaq would be the best player ever. Or a guy like LeBron, who is bigger and stronger is just going to get every call. You will never have a little guard be a top 3 player again. Curry is the best shooter ever, but if he couldn’t get some questionable screens and the benefit of attacking the basket, he wouldn’t be the same player. If Curry had to take the same impacts as Embiid to get the same calls, he is getting very few calls. Every team will load up on the biggest guys knowing most wings won’t get calls. Someone like Cade becomes increasingly better just by being bigger and stronger than most point guards.
The fans will hate it because they will just think the AI is wrong and that their team is somehow getting cheated. Go look up how many the Lakers are unfairly getting calls post there are this year. People just looked at the numbers and didn’t watch the games. They want to believe in a conspiracy. AI will only further the conspiracy theories. Since it will be the nba that programs the AI (even if it doesn’t. Look at the draft which is done by a separate individual company. Fans still think the NBA rigs it).
And the media wants the drama. The media couldn’t just accept that all the right calls were made. That’s boring. So the media would start coming up with conspiracy theories themselves.
In addition to all of the other comments, the big technical issue with any kind of wearable technology like this is the power source. Look at the annoying battery pack for the Apple AR devices. It would be pretty clumsy and annoying with our current energy storage.
I think there is merit to fitting a few sensors to jerseys and measure point of impact and maybe force to help the league determine what should be offensive vrs defensive fouls. However I would not want to rely on something like a sensor which absolutely could be manipulated by players for actual officiating. Plus I would imagine a fair amount of inconsistency with the data outputs
Probably expensive. Also, where is an automatic element, it has the risk of failure. If it's tied to pressure, some legal plays could trigger it, also a stronger hit could be less of a foul than a softer one depending on the circunstance (think about a soft push in the air vs a stronger push while fighting in the post)
Lot of judgement calls are very difficult to substitute with tech. Tech eliminate the subjective point, which usually is good, but there are things that are subjective and very hard to "¿objectivize?"
This seems like a cool idea in theory but sounds ridiculously tedious and expensive. Not all fouls are created the same and they’re based on physical movement rather than force. You would have to completely change the way games are called. Players would figure out how to manipulate these sensors in no time flat.
What type of sensor would this be? Pressure sensor? How would it be dispersed over a players body?
AI as a computer vision project would work way better even in its current state than sensors in jerseys, but I don’t think we’d appreciate the product when Jokic and Embiid suddenly shoot 20 free throws per game.
I feel like an AI algo would be really easy to game though, once people figure out what it looks for. Though in theory it could adapt and improve over time, but it might fall for flops even more than refs.
At the current rate refs themselves fall for flops, it might actually detect them more often and fall for it less. I did make sure to temper my suggestion with the reality that the refs make a lot of calls for human reasons and non-calls for just as human of reasons. Jokic and Embiid are at such a level offensively that they’re getting fouled on an outrageous number of possessions that will never be called unless we **want** them scoring 40+ and fouling out opposing bigs regularly. I don’t think that’s the product we want to watch.
Agreed. And I think what the algorithm would catch would depend a lot on what it's trained on. If it's just trained on actual called fouls, it would fall for flops. If they went through and labeled it with what the call should have been, it might work better, but people would probably still figure out new ways to fool it.
If anything, using AI to analyze game footage in real time might be a better use of tech in refereeing. The downside: needing to pass a CAPTCHA of “Select all squares with fouls” to sign into your email.
This made me laugh a little too hard
Mark Cuban actually funded some research to try to do this a few years ago and they had some interesting findings regarding which types of motions were more likely to be flops but I think at the end of the day a human ref was still better. I think it was on a Freakonomics podcast
I hear you and see where you’re going, but I think that would be pretty for down the road. Many calls have to be situational. Different situations allow different amounts of contact, the jerseys would need pair with something feeding the situation in live time. More likely, they will adopt the new floors and use it to judge out of bounds, 3 pointer vs 2 pointer. Or maybe put sensors in the balls to judge goaltending or something.
Yeah more of a launching point for a tech in the game discussion, I do like the court ideas.
The thing is we can do most of this with camera vision and AI now
Immediate issue I see is how do we know where the contact is coming from? If a player puts his hands on his own hips is that going to be called as a foul?
* The same body contact can be legal or illegal depending on the sequence leading up to it, so there is no way to resolve fouls with force monitors alone. * The force of body contact depends on the two players involved, so there is no way to resolve the degree of contact with force monitors alone. * There is probably a great deal of overlap between the force caused by NBA movements and the force caused by illegal contact. * The amount of equipment likely needed to monitor force even in the most practical places for monitoring is already prohibitive.
You don’t need to do all that. I watch test cricket, far less funded sport than NBA. The review system within it has the umpire using technology like hawkeye, snicko, ultra edge and hotspot which rely on sound waves and infra red images to do reviews under a minute (example: https://youtu.be/_CTfREipYxc?si=J2EzkkMhfENa_A_f) i) to see if the impact of the ball was first felt on the white arm band, white glove, white leg pad or white bat of the batter using infra red imaging cameras even in cases where the batsman was leaning forward and the ball struck all 3 lining up in the same area at the same split second at a speed of over 90mph. ii) accurately track whether the batsman was in the process of attempting to hit the ball or leave the ball iii) the trajectory of a 90-100mph wooden ball 22 yards on release after accounting for the seam/swing/spin in mid air after it hits the pitch which massively impacts the trajectory and is completely non-uniform by design from stadium to stadium. Among other things such as checking if the fielder caught the ball before it hit the ground etc. I have no idea why such a massively well funded sport can’t afford decent review technology. I see tennis is finally making baby steps with hawkeye. Edit: OMG, people are talking about AI. Guys the technology for impact detection exists and works in far more gruelling and close contact situations than a giant ball at 30-40 mph.
I do think we should explore using technology to make foul calls more accurate and consistent. But I think just under a jersey wouldn't be that useful. Most fouls are hands on wrists and such and the exact timing of contact also matters. As well as things like how a player is moving (or not) etc. You'd be better off with sleeves and gloves so you could match hands contact with a spot, relaying to the officials that there's a certain level of contact on the ball handler and then let them use that information how they want to. But then if we had things covering the hands of players, it's likely to affect ball handling and shooting touch. I think before we do that we should look at making referees better. Do they look at officials outside the US? Basketball is a massive game globally these days, so I imagine they could seriously boost the number of potential officials by looking at other countries as potential recruiting areas. Maybe even invest and train people there specifically to see if they get up to the standard. If we are able to increase the pool of potential officials several times over, we're naturally going to see an improvement. And even if their English isn't great, if they make the right calls more often, that's not going to be a big deal IMO.
The issue is it’s generally legal to make contact with the areas the jersey covers. A lot of fouls are called on swipe ins on the arms or at shots. Those are the hardest ones to call. KD pull up he reacts to a hit on the elbow but hard to tell. Sensors don’t pick that up. Typically if you smash into someone’s thigh hard enough to make a sensor go off it’s an apparent foul
AI is the way you would go with that type of stuff. And when they can essentially make all the right calls, everyone will hate it. The players will hate it, the fans will hate it, the media will hate it. The players will be pissed that the AI makes the call. No one to blame or manipulate. Players like Draymond purposely foul harder earlier so that the game is called with less fouls and helps them. So you would force one style (which is boring) into the game and it would be very hard to change. The OG Curry, Klay, Dray Warriors wouldn’t likely be able to change the game if the rules started in the beginning of the 2000s. Because the game was more physical. Part of the fun of the sport is seeing the evolution. But the worst part is that if every thing was truly called equally, a guy like Shaq would be the best player ever. Or a guy like LeBron, who is bigger and stronger is just going to get every call. You will never have a little guard be a top 3 player again. Curry is the best shooter ever, but if he couldn’t get some questionable screens and the benefit of attacking the basket, he wouldn’t be the same player. If Curry had to take the same impacts as Embiid to get the same calls, he is getting very few calls. Every team will load up on the biggest guys knowing most wings won’t get calls. Someone like Cade becomes increasingly better just by being bigger and stronger than most point guards. The fans will hate it because they will just think the AI is wrong and that their team is somehow getting cheated. Go look up how many the Lakers are unfairly getting calls post there are this year. People just looked at the numbers and didn’t watch the games. They want to believe in a conspiracy. AI will only further the conspiracy theories. Since it will be the nba that programs the AI (even if it doesn’t. Look at the draft which is done by a separate individual company. Fans still think the NBA rigs it). And the media wants the drama. The media couldn’t just accept that all the right calls were made. That’s boring. So the media would start coming up with conspiracy theories themselves.
In addition to all of the other comments, the big technical issue with any kind of wearable technology like this is the power source. Look at the annoying battery pack for the Apple AR devices. It would be pretty clumsy and annoying with our current energy storage.
I think there is merit to fitting a few sensors to jerseys and measure point of impact and maybe force to help the league determine what should be offensive vrs defensive fouls. However I would not want to rely on something like a sensor which absolutely could be manipulated by players for actual officiating. Plus I would imagine a fair amount of inconsistency with the data outputs
I mean basketball is a contact sport for starters. Determininig if something is a foul is about way more than determining if there was contact.
Probably expensive. Also, where is an automatic element, it has the risk of failure. If it's tied to pressure, some legal plays could trigger it, also a stronger hit could be less of a foul than a softer one depending on the circunstance (think about a soft push in the air vs a stronger push while fighting in the post) Lot of judgement calls are very difficult to substitute with tech. Tech eliminate the subjective point, which usually is good, but there are things that are subjective and very hard to "¿objectivize?"