USA Today - Basketball buddies build a computerized shot doctor
By Kevin Maney - USA Today
DALLAS — Eighteen months ago, there were three guys who met at church, lived in the same Silicon Valley neighborhood and played basketball in one of their driveways.
he first guy was a physicist and MBA. The second, an expert in an esoteric computer field called machine vision. The last, a rocket scientist.
While playing, they talked shop and basketball, as guys sometimes do. This led them to think up an invention, as Silicon Valley guys sometimes do. They made a seeing computer to teach basketball players to shoot better. It analyzes the arc of a ball as it travels from hand to hoop, then it tells the player how to change the arc so the shot has a better chance of going in.
Now, their invention is being quietly tested by the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors, as well as teams at Stanford University and the University of Iowa and two high school teams. The Mavericks' shooting coach, Gary Boren, has embraced the machine, and this year the team is on pace to have one of the best shooting seasons in the history of the NBA.
At this early stage, there's no way to measure the machine's contribution, but Boren says it is "at least one piece of the puzzle." Former football great Joe Montana, who sees huge potential, signed on to advise the inventors.
The machine could alter the way basketball is taught at all levels, and improve shooting. The inventors have patents pending and dream of how the technology could also be applied to football, tennis, bowling and other sports.
They still have their day jobs, but they imagine building a "God-led company" around their creations. They named the company Pillar Vision, taken from the pillar of fire in Exodus. They call the machine Noah. Its tag line: "Building the perfect arc."
This story had its genesis in the way Alan Marty embarrassed his daughter, which dads sometimes do. Marty, 46, played basketball for North Central College in Naperville, Ill. That was before he became a professor of physics at Silliman University, a Christian college in the Philippines, got his MBA from Stanford University and worked as an executive at a few Silicon Valley companies. He's the guy with business moxie and tech industry contacts through the Stanford MBA alumni network.
Marty's daughter plays basketball for her high school in Menlo Park, Calif. She'd been having trouble with her shot, as Marty recalls. It was straight, but the arc was too flat. As a physicist would know, gravity makes a basketball follow a parabolic arc as it travels through the air. The higher the arc, the better. When the ball reaches the basket, it has more room to get through the hoop if it comes straight down vs. coming in flat.
Marty calculated the perfect arc height for his daughter — it changes depending on the height of the shooter — and rigged up a rake on a ladder in their driveway. "I told her, 'Shoot over this,' " Marty says. She did. A couple of times. Until she no longer wanted to be seen shooting baskets over a rake her dad had propped up.
Marty wanted to find something unobtrusive. He found more than 400 patents on gadgets to help shooting. Few concentrated on arc. And, Marty says, "every one of them broke the rule that it can't change the way you practice."
In another part of Menlo Park, tucked near Stanford University, Ridge McGhee had done almost the same thing with his daughter — except he built a contraption out of PVC pipe and said, "Shoot over this."
McGhee is a one-man company called Machine Vision Associates. He's an expert in software that makes computers "see" objects. Most of his work is industrial, such as putting machine vision on an assembly line so the machine can spot defective computer chips.
The stars align
McGhee and Marty attended Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. McGhee heard that Marty and friends played basketball in Marty's driveway. He asked to join.
"During breaks we'd talk about what we do and where we work," McGhee says. "A year-and-a-half ago, Alan called and said, 'I have this idea. Tell me what you think.' "
Thus McGhee and Marty started tinkering — still just with the idea of helping their daughters. Then Marty's wife, Cindy, met another church member: Tom Edwards, division chief at NASA's Ames Research Center, who has degrees in aeronautics and astronautics. In other words, he's a rocket scientist. Cindy told Edwards about the project, and he jumped in.
Before long, McGhee had a prototype in his dining room. He set up a hoop and a ball on a pendulum, which he'd swing so it arced down and through the basket, like an upside-down basketball shot. He hooked up a computer with a camera lens and tracked the movement. "That was my feasibility study," McGhee says.
At that point, Marty told McGhee and Edwards that he thought others might be interested in their project, so they started thinking bigger. Marty set the rules: Their invention had to work in any gym, no matter the lighting or color schemes. It had to be simple to use. And it could not involve changes to the ball, player or court.
"It was one of the most challenging projects I'd done in 10 years," McGhee says. That's because computers are good at recognizing differences in a largely consistent pattern, like on a chip assembly line. But they have a hard time recognizing and tracking an image that is never the same twice — which occurs when a ball flies through the air.
The guys tried a camera on a 10-foot ladder and ran the images through a PC. They tried collecting video and having the computer analyze it. They tried different ways to give players feedback. They found it worked best when the machine spoke to them about the shot they just took — the way a coach would. Another of Marty's neighbors, professional narrator Patrick Feehan, volunteered his voice for Noah.
Finally, they had a unit with a special camera and lens and a big speaker attached to a superfast PC. It was loaded with sophisticated software, written by McGhee and Edwards, which could track the ball and analyze its motion on the fly.
Marty put one in the Riekes Center for Human Enhancement, a health club in Menlo Park. College and former pro players went there, and Marty hoped to win supporters and investors. He raised enough money (he won't say how much) to take the project to the next level.
Word of mouth passed through Silicon Valley's investment community until it reached Hall of Fame quarterback Montana, a partner in investment firm Champion Ventures. Montana saw Noah, and while Champion Ventures doesn't invest in start-ups, Montana agreed to advise the company. "I'm trying to work on getting one for my kids' high school," he says.
Montana told his friend Chris Mullin, former Warriors' star and now assistant coach for the team. Mullin wanted one for the Warriors.
Noah leapt from garage project to big-time development when Marty hired design firm Ideo, which designed the iMac laptop, to make it user-friendly.
In the belly of the American Airlines Center in Dallas is the practice court of the hottest team in the NBA, the Mavericks. Reserve center Evan Eschmeyer, in black sweatpants and gray T-shirt, stands at the foul line, ball in hand. On the sidelines 20 feet away, Boren stands behind what looks like an orange lectern, but which is Noah.
"Noah is ready," Feehan's smooth voice says from the machine's speakers. "Start shooting." Eschmeyer shoots. Swish. "Forty-eight," Noah says. Eschmeyer shoots again. "Forty-nine." This goes on for a while as Eschmeyer tries to consistently shoot with an arc of 50. Then he and shooting coach Boren look at Noah's screen, replaying video of the shots and watching Noah compare their arcs.
Mavericks embrace Noah
Marty had approached Boren, one of the top shooting coaches in the world, because he'd heard that Boren especially preached the importance of arc. It helped, too, that the Mavs are owned by techie Mark Cuban, who'd become a billionaire by co-founding Broadcast.com and selling it to Yahoo in 1999. Cuban is famous for spending lavishly on anything that might benefit his players, from extra-fluffy towels to DVD players in each locker.
When Boren saw Noah, its potential was clear. "I'd been yakking about arc for years," Boren says. "But it's one of the hardest things to measure. I'd just say, 'I think you'll do better if you shoot higher.' But how good is that?"
Humans can't eyeball an arc and tell if it's just a few degrees one way or another. Yet if a 6-foot-5 player shoots an arc with a peak height of 14.5 feet instead of 14, the target area for getting the ball inside the hoop increases 7%.
By repeatedly shooting and getting feedback, players can teach their muscles to shoot a consistent, high arc. Any tiny improvement could be huge in a sport where improvements are hard fought.
For the NBA, the average free throw shooting percentage has hovered between 71% and 77% since 1955. Almost 16% of NBA final playoff games since 1952 have been won by one or two points, as have 17% of NCAA tournament games.
Boren brought Noah to the Mavs before the start of this season. A number of players have used it to hone free throws and jump shots. Through 48 games, the Mavs were leading the league in free-throw percentage, hitting 83.3%. Last season, the team hit 80.6%. The Mavs have some of the league's best shooters, and Boren is convinced Noah is making them even better.
The improvements might be more impressive for less polished players. Marty installed a Noah at Silicon Valley's Menlo Atherton High School in November, and the girls varsity team latched onto it.
"Our three-point shooting percentage has improved immensely," says coach Pam Wimberly. Point guard Meredith Pressfield had been struggling with three-pointers. Now, with Noah's help, she's hitting an impressive 45% of them.
Looking for sales
Over lunch at a seafood restaurant in beef country, Marty bounces with the enthusiasm of a big kid. He's just watched Eschmeyer practice using Noah. He never thought that the talks on his driveway court would lead to the possibility of affecting the highest levels of the sport.
It's still early, of course. Marty hasn't priced Noah, though it would likely be thousands of dollars. He wants to attract coaches to act as distributors in their regions. He just brought in a fourth person at Pillar, tech executive and one-time high school basketball star Jervis Williams.
Pillar will start selling Noah at April's National Association of Basketball Coaches convention in New Orleans.
This week, the Web site went online: www.noahbasketball.com.
But Marty is willing to let his mind race ahead, too. "I can imagine (sports) commentators talking about arc the way they now talk about pitch speed in baseball," he says, thinking Noah machines could become as common as radar guns.
Other Noah-like machines eventually could measure ball trajectories, arcs, takeoffs and the like of football passes, tennis serve tosses, bowling throws and golf drives. Marty would love for the technology to become so inexpensive, it could be built into golf bags or carts.
Most of all, he hopes that Noah's progeny will be common enough to be owned by regular guys, who maybe know each other from church and play a little ball in the driveway.
Contributing: Darryl Haralson