SportVU is an automated ID and tracking technology that has the ability to collect positioning data of the ball, players and referees during a game. SportVu, which is founded in Israel in 2005, was acquired by STATS LLC in 2008 December.

SportVU tells us defensive and offensive alignment relative to ball location, shot trajectory and the number of dribbles and passes made by a team and player.

Stats LLC has put additional cameras to some NBA courts to record everything that occurs on the court. The first five teams to have SportVu cameras are Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Golden State.

Players, referees and the ball with an exact location in x,y coordinates are tracked. 25 times a second, software analyzes the video, and stores information about where everyone is and what is occurring. 1,000,000 entries per game is added to databases. Without having to chart and track a game by hand and eye, player position and defender proximity to a player are now available. In another words, defense is more quantifiable with what SportVu brings to the table.

StatsCube is a new data warehouse tool which the NBA has been developing over the last few years.
Starting by 2009-10 season, StatsCube is available to every team. It provides instantaneous statistical analysis, calculations and produce adjustable notifications and customized reports.

StatsCube has in it every point, rebound, assist, steal, block, turnover, missed shot, foul and substitution since the 1996-97 season, when play-by-play data first started being tracked courtside. The point in the game when each occurred, and what players were on the floor at the time, is recorded. Best of all, StatsCube can slice and dice the data so teams can analyze it instantaneously.

Say a team's power forward grabs only X rebounds per minute. Is the team better when he's on the floor? What players shoot the best in the last three minutes of a close game? Does a center block as many shots after he's picked up his fourth foul as he does when he has fewer than four?
With a little bit of training, StatsCube can answer all of those questions within seconds. The data always has been available to teams, but they've never before been able to access it so quickly and easily with StatsCube.

What's Next: During Game 4 of the 2009 Finals, the NBA did a demo of a system in development that tracks player and ball movement through the use of six HD cameras placed around the arena. This technology, called SportVu, gives the precise location of every one on the floor so that the play that is run, all of the the ball touches and the positioning for anybody on the court in terms of x,y coordinates is a matter of few clicks. Even the trajectory of the ball as it went to the basket will be available.