Owners Rumors
“As much as I love doing demos of word processors, this is a little sexier,” Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said Wednesday to a small group of reporters at Staples Center before Los Angeles’s season opener. Second Spectrum CEO Rajiv Maheswaran joined Ballmer for the presentation. CourtVision merges postgame analysis with in-game action. In Player mode, a color bar above the player changes as their effective field goal percentage goes up and down. So a 40 percent shooter from midrange will be red, but a 40 percent shooter from 3 will be green, because of the difference in shot value between each spot on the floor. The percentages will be rolling, Maheswaran said, so at the start of the 2018-19 season, for example, Tobias Harris’s numbers will be based only on last year until he accumulates enough data this season.
Kerry Eggers: Terry Stotts on what he’ll be thinking during tonight’s @Paul Allen tribute: “What an extraordinary man he was, not only in sports but in the world in general. I’ll be thinking about the impact he has had on lives around the world beyond basketball. It was a phenomenal life.”
Kerry Eggers: Terry Stotts, on if Lakers-Blazers seems bigger than the average season opener: “It would be enough it was just the Lakers. You throw LeBron in the mix, and the commissioner is here, and it’s national television. The passing of Paul Allen — you name it, it’s involved tonight.”
Tim MacMahon: Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta during pregame MVP presentation for James Harden: “You always have to follow up an MVP with a world championship. … We have a better team this year!”
Jonathan Feigen: Fertitta: “We have a better team this year. Just ask Mike. Sixty wins and a lot more.”
In another demonstration of the NBA’s technological and analytics revolution, the LA Clippers on Wednesday unveiled a platform that makes multiple streams of augmented game viewing available, the first of its kind among professional sports in North America. “What we have today is what I would call an augmented reality interactive view of a game,” team owner Steve Ballmer said. “And that’s fantastic.”
