http://blog.mysanantonio.com/spursn...oor-look-at-the-medical-secrets-of-the-spurs/
If there is something new or cutting edge going on in the NBA, there’s an excellent chance the Spurs are at the forefront.
They were one of the first NBA teams to install the SportVU camera tracking systems that are now found in every NBA arena. They were one of the first NBA teams to hire an applied sports scientist. And, according to this fascinating piece from Ken Berger of CBS Sports, they were one of the first NBA teams to employ Catapult, an Australian company that specializes in biomechanical analysis.
As Berger explains:
This season, 12 NBA teams…used (Catapult’s) monitoring device, which is about the size of a car clicker and fits into the lining of a compression shirt.
The tiny device features a location-positioning system (indoor GPS); an accelerometer to measure stops and starts; a gyroscope to measure the body’s bending and twisting; and a magnetometer to measure direction. Oh, it also has a microprocessor that collects and parses more than 1,000 data points per second, beaming them to the trainer’s screen of choice in real time.
At least half the NBA teams using the device also have their players wear heart-rate monitors at the same time to track what’s going on inside their bodies in response to training. The coaching staff can monitor every player’s movement patterns and physiological responses in real time, and all the data can be integrated to provide a complete picture of how a player is moving and how his body is responding to it.
Less important than the actual in-game data is the cumulative picture it provides of player health, giving coaches something more than gut instincts to rely on as they try to navigate their roster through the grueling NBA season.
The focus of Berger’s story is the Golden State Warriors, who shared how the accumulated data influenced Steve Kerr’s controversial decision to rest a handful of his key players, including eventual MVP Stephen Curry, during a long road trip late in the season.
“We felt like those guys were reaching their limit,” said Keke Lyles, Golden State’s director of athletic performance. “A lot of non-contact injuries are fatigue-related. If we see big drops consistently over the last few games, and we know in practice they’ve dropped and they’re telling us they’re tired and sore and beat up, then we start painting a big picture: ‘Yeah, these guys are probably fatigued.’ When they’re fatigued, they’re at a higher risk.”
Indeed, a Catapult executive shared an anecdote with Berger about a trainer for a soccer team that uses its devices who predicted that particular player had an 85 percent chance of injury if he played in an upcoming match. He did, and promptly pulled a hamstring.
The secretive Spurs, of course, would never reveal such information. Rather, coach Gregg Popovich, one of the first coaches to actively rest players against conventional wisdom, speaks only in vague terms about who he chooses to sit, and when.
“Pop doesn’t need computers,” Kerr joked to Berger. “He has his own brain and it gathers all this data and figures it out on his own.”
Kerr has a point, in that Popovich apparently doesn’t even have a computer in his office at the team practice site. But as Berger notes, the Spurs were one of the first two NBA teams, along with Dallas, to hire Catapult, joining up after the 2011 lockout. The players can often be seen wearing their harnesses during training camp, with blinking lights under their jerseys making them look like the robots many have long suspected them to be.
In reality, the Spurs are human beings, made of bone and muscle and ligaments prone to breaking down with overuse. And now we know just a little bit more about how they and an increasing number of NBA teams endeavor to keep all those exceptionally athletic bodies in one piece.