Visual analysis of time-motion in basketball games

Abstract

This work aims to facilitate the task of basketball coaches, by means of the visualization and analysis of the players' movements in the court. This is possible thanks to the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices that generate data of the position of the player, almost in real time. The main objective of our proposal consists on the tracking, both statistics and kinematics, of a basketball player due to the physical activity developed during a match. The comparison of the data from several players or between two teams also will improve the performance and tactical capacity of players and trainers. On one hand, the study of time-motion in sports is largely covered in the literature. On the other hand, the use of personal GPS devices for training purposes is a common practice. However, the design of interactive visualization tools that exploit the data stored in GPS devices during a match, thus enabling to perform its visual analysis, is still an open area. The work presented in this paper identifies the relevant aspects of the basketball game that are valuable for a coach in terms of team and individual performance analysis, and discusses the design and implementation of a tool that exploits the methods and techniques of a visual analytics approach. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.