City St George’s basketball team bounce around innovative ideas with Sport Sparks

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City St George’s basketball team bounce around innovative ideas with Sport Sparks

13 August 2024

Sport Sparks helped to boost creativity and find solutions for City St George's basketball team

According to an article in Forbes magazine, AI is revolutionizing basketball:

“Teams are always on the lookout for that competitive edge, that unique advantage that can elevate their game to the next level. The answer, surprisingly, isn't always found on the court. It's found in the burgeoning world of artificial intelligence (AI). The National Basketball Association (NBA), a pioneer in embracing technological advancements, has become a fertile ground for AI innovations.”[1]

The author, Neil Sahota, lists several uses of AI which are transforming the sport – from data analytics which analyse game footage to develop strategies, to predictive analytics which can inform potential injury risks.

But what happens when there isn’t a clear problem or a clear solution?

Georgios Gazetas is the coach for City St George’s men’s basketball team. Made up of players across the globe, from the UK to the United States and Eastern Europe, the team is one of the University’s most successful. This season, Gazetas spent time using Sport Sparks to help him come up with more innovative solutions to team issues.

Sport Sparks is a digital product, co-developed with professional sports coaches. The tool supports coaches through athlete or team challenges by generating sparks – prompts which assist the coach to come up with ideas and action plans they haven’t considered before. These sparks are generated from a combination of the original challenge applied to coded creative problem-solving frameworks, specialist coaching background information provided by senior coaches and experts and AI processing.

Gazetas thought more laterally about the potential factors that influenced his players

Gazetas entered challenges faced by the team and its players into Sport Sparks, and was encouraged to explore the sparks that were generated, as well as the alternative ideas that it offered. As a result, Gazetas thought more laterally about the potential factors that influenced his players.

He found new ways to rethink his team’s strategy by focusing on his players’ interactions on and off the court.

For example, in response to a specific challenge, Gazetas was prompted to think about how his team interacted outside of practice and games.

Being aware of external factors leads to better understanding and improving of athlete performance

Research shows external factors such as playing environment; alcohol; sleep; a variety of emotions and team environment can impact athlete performance, and being aware of these external factors leads to better understanding and improving of athlete performance.[2]

The prompts in Sport Sparks are researched and curated by experts in creative thinking and sports professionals, meaning the AI is not just scraping random information from the internet. This benefits the coaches as the tool provides targeted, robust and researched guidance specific to sports coaching.

He started observing how the players acted during their free time

Coach Gazetas worked with the final spark in the image: ‘How could we prioritise the understanding by giving them free time to practice what they choose?’

He started observing how the players acted during their free time, before and after practice sessions. Gazetas noticed one player giving advice to a few others during breaks in practice and approached this player to be as outspoken during game time.

The player was encouraged to use his natural leadership qualities on the court, and to support this behaviour Coach Gazetas named the player team captain.

two students playing basketball from different teams

The tool helped identify a team captain and improve three-point shooting for players

The players as well as Coach Gazetas continued using Sport Sparks regularly. As the tool helped identify a team captain and improve three-point shooting for players, they felt more comfortable using Sport Sparks as a tool for outside of the box thinking. They began to implement new techniques in their coaching and training, inspired by the tool.

Coach Gazetas found Sport Sparks useful in a student sports setting. It was an effective way to overcome the lack of resources sometimes experienced in academic student sports facilities.

By the end of the season, he reflected that Sport Sparks could have created new patterns of behaviour around practice and coaching more easily from the outset of the season, instead of during. Alongside this, Gazetas suggested that an onboarding workshop demonstrating and explaining the features and benefits of the tool and its creative thinking principles would improve understanding.

DISCOVER NEW SOLUTIONS WITH SPORT SPARKS

Bibliography

[1] Sahota, Neil. n.d. “Slam Dunk Technology: How AI Is Revolutionizing the Game of Basketball.” Forbes. Accessed June 4, 2024. https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilsahota/2024/03/26/slam-dunk-technology-how-ai-is-revolutionizing-the-game-of-basketball/?sh=6be9c96235a1.

[2] Dahl, Kimberly. 2013. “Running Head: FACTORS and PERFORMANCE 1 External Factors and Athletic Performance.” https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&context=honors.

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