The NBA Is Turning To Wearable Sensors To Prevent Player Injuries
The NBA Is Turning To Wearable Sensors: When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver spoke at the league’s inaugural Launchpad technology event at last month’s Las Vegas Summer League, his major focus was unmistakable: improving player availability through the NBA’s emerging field of basketball-related technology.
Silver’s remarks were sharp, and he targeted more than simply injuries.
“Obviously, nothing is more annoying than injuries and… having a series determined by guys not on the floor,” Silver added. “There’s nothing more aggravating for our fans, honestly, than having players who aren’t injured, following some regimens designed for relaxation.” … Finding a method to achieve the perfect, healthy balance is what the league is all about.”
Several 2022 Launchpad finalists have developed health and recovery solutions; Silver even said that next year’s programme will be entirely focused on player availability, with a focus on avoiding soft-tissue injuries and fostering healthy behaviours in young basketball. Silver’s message was apparent in subsequent statements, which covered everything from scheduled rest approaches and media-rights contracts to fans’ want to see their favourite players on the court: the league will turn every stone to keep players in the lineup.
It was fitting that Silver’s statements came during summer league, which has evolved into one of the league’s technology and innovation hotspots. I attended both the Launchpad event and the league’s annual Tech Expo, a booth event presenting solutions from several dozen experts in sports technology, over the course of several days in Vegas. One aspect of the emphasis on player health jumped out to me: the emerging field of sewn-in cloth sensor technologies. Here’s what I discovered about a sector that will have a significant influence on the sports world in the next few years.
Load and force measurements have long been used in injury diagnosis, rehabilitation, and prevention. These measures provide information on whether athletes are fully healed, and they may use heavy sensors known as force plates to assess muscle imbalances on either side of the body.
However, the inconvenience of this strategy has long limited it. Transporting a hefty force plate offers clear logistical challenges for teams and athletes that travel across the country during their seasons.
That’s where Nextiles comes in, as a speaker at the Launchpad and Tech Expo events in 2022.
Nextiles coats fabric threads with these diverse materials before sewing them into ordinary clothing, resulting in what Sun refers to as “highways” of conductivity that preserve complete ranges of mobility and flexibility. They then send real-time data to a neighboring CPU.
Athletes can gain extra information by wearing one of Nextiles’ wearable materials. Nextiles’ technology has been used in both shooting sleeves and performance socks, the latter of which can track nearly everything the portable force plate can plus even more data.
If Silver and the NBA want elite players to play as much as possible, sewn-in fabric technology might be the first of multiple options. Will it completely eliminate the problem of long-term injuries or even prevent clubs from resting outstanding players? No, but it is a step in the right direction. So don’t be shocked if high-tech, data-recording clothes like the ones on exhibit in Vegas this summer become commonplace on courts and fields near you in the near future.