Raptors Add State of the Art Screen to Practice Facility to Help With Analytics Department

Pascal Siakam could hardly focus as he spoke to reporters following Tuesday morning's Toronto Raptors practice at the OVO Athletic Centre.

As he stood with his back against the northernmost wall of the practice facility his eyes gazed past the cluster of cameras, glued to the new 121-by-10-foot screen that hangs on the opposite side of the gym. The stimulation was irresistible as strange metrics, highlights, and different variations of the word "win" populated the screen.

The screen is the newest addition to the practice facility and makes the Raptors the first team in the league to install a screen of such size into their gym, a spokesperson for the team said. It's nothing particularly revolutionary but rather acts as a way to disseminate information easily to the players while holding them accountable for their performance.

"I love it. It’s great," said Raptors coach Nick Nurse whose idea it was to add the screen to the gym. "There’s a lot of information flowing across those boards, from the NOAHlytics, from the shooting stuff, from the last game’s footage to the next opponent footage, to a bunch of charted things we have up there. So there’s a lot of stuff we can put up there and we can definitely use it. It looks really cool, too. The players really like it.”

The Raptors have used the NOAHlytics program for a few seasons now. It's a camera-based software that hangs above each basket, collecting data on every shot that goes up. That data is then broken down into the depth, trajectory, and angle of each shot allowing the players to tweak their shooting mechanics as necessary.

"The analytics is crazy," said Christian Koloko, Toronto's 2022 second-round pick. "Every time you shoot they tell you how off your shot was, like if the [arc] was 45 degrees. So we got everything, we got everything to get you better."

Beside the shooting analytics are statistics from Toronto's most recent game breaking down the leaderboard in deflections and assists. On Tuesday, for example, Gary Trent Jr. and Josh Jackson led the team with five deflections apiece while Scottie Barnes and D.J. Wilson each collected three assists. Having that data on the wall allows the players to be accountable for their stats without being constantly reminded by the coaching staff where they rank, Siakam said.

"I think there’s a way to just give you that message without every day just talking to you every day," Siakam added. "It’s just like you can glance up there and see that, man, like I had one deflection last game like maybe I should do better or whatever the case might be. So I think that is a different way to just communicate with us."

For all the fancy analytics that get thrown around the NBA these days, sometimes all it takes is putting up a giant screen to get the message across.

Further Reading

Survey: NBA GMs see Toronto as league's best home-court advantage

Christian Koloko's defensive impact goes far beyond the box score

Raptors lean in to unusual lineups in preseason victory over Jazz