Amazon says its AI will let NBA fans track brand-new stats (www.theverge.com)

Amazon Web Services is launching “NBA Inside the Game,” a basketball intelligence platform debuting in the 2025–26 season that uses AI fed by detailed player-tracking to produce brand-new, live statistics for broadcasts, the NBA app and website. The system tracks 29 body parts per player (AWS hasn’t specified which ones) and fuses movement, pose and positioning data into metrics such as shot difficulty and an Expected Field Goal Percentage that factors shooter orientation and defender positions. New measures include “Gravity,” which quantifies the space and advantage a player creates by how teammates and defenders move around them, and a “Defensive Score Box” that breaks down defensive contributions play-by-play. A Play Finder tool will let fans search footage at the individual-play level alongside the new analytics. For the AI/ML community this is a step toward far more granular, real-time sports analytics that combine computer vision, biomechanics and probabilistic modeling at scale. It promises richer scouting, coaching insights and fan engagement, while echoing other leagues’ moves to sensor- and camera-driven data (e.g., Hawk-Eye in NFL/MLB/Wimbledon). Key technical and operational implications include model accuracy under occlusion, latency for live delivery, data governance and potential bias in metric design—areas where teams, researchers and regulators will want transparency and validation as the product rolls out.