Report: NBA to trial player tracking chips in D-League

The revolution is coming, and new commissioner Adam Silver is leading the charge.

The NBA has already implemented SportVu player tracking cameras in all 29 arenas around the league, even going so far as to make some of that data available for public consumption. X, Y and Z coordinates are just the beginning, however.

According to a report from Zach Lowe of Grantland, the league will announce on Friday that they will begin trialing player tracking devices in the D-League. From the report:

On Friday it will announce another such D-League trial balloon: Players on four D-League teams will begin wearing small devices in games that measure both physical movements and cardiovascular changes, according to league sources.

Nearly two-dozen NBA teams use the devices, manufactured by three companies, during practices. But no major U.S. professional league has allowed for their regular use during games, the league says. The devices will measure all the time and distance things the SportVU data-tracking cameras are already getting at — player speed, distance traveled, cuts, accelerations and decelerations, and more. It will also track player jumps, something SportVU cameras don’t yet do, the league says.

The benefits to such technology are endless, but the most interesting may be in how the devices could allow teams to better understand fatigue and injury prevention. Tracking heart rate, exertion, speed, direction change and more could provide a trove of valuable information.

The entire report is worth a read if you're interested in the technology and some of the issues that could arise should the league try and expand this to the NBA (in short: the players union will want access to the data).

All 17 D-League teams are expected to be wearing the one-ounce tracking chips by the end of the season.