Predicting NBA Talent from Enormous Amounts of College Basketball Tracking Data

In 2010, the SportVU optical player and ball tracking system was first deployed in select NBA arenas by teams wanting to obtain an edge in player and team analysis. Due to the value of the tracking data, the NBA then adopted SportVU league-wide prior to the 2013-14 season. Since then, nearly all analysis and decision-making for NBA teams has been data-driven, utilizing not only the raw positional data, but tactical insights derived from the markings detected automatically by machine learning algorithms (e.g., screens, isolations, drives, etc.).