Hoop dreams and data streams

Running the numbers

Dr Jenny Strickler started with the Thunder as a training camp intern for the 2015-16 season. Five years later she completed her PhD in sport and exercise science at UTS. Now she’s their Director of Performance Science, where her job is to collect, analyse and report on any data related to players’ physical health and performance.

“Most of what I do focuses on how we manipulate what they’re doing on court to maximise output and health throughout the season.”

To do this her team draws on a multitude of datapoints. They measure distance and velocity with optical tracking and local positioning systems. They look at accelerations, decelerations, changes in direction. They get kinematic information (that is, data on how things move) through motion-capture assessments, and kinetic information (why things move) through force plate data. Add to this body composition, metabolic profiling, strength testing, table testing with medical staff. The list goes on.

Taken together, all this information is used to paint a picture of what a player can achieve on the court, contrasted against points of stress that could put their joints and muscles at risk.

“It’s striking a balance between what they need to do to perform and what they need to do to prevent injury and stay available.”

A dynamic system

The challenge is that none of this takes place in a static environment. Players evolve and change. They get injured and benched, meaning others need to step up to fill the gap.

“Each player is dealing with different types of health or performance concerns,” says Strickler. “So it’s understanding how the dosing needs to be manipulated throughout the season.”

To do this, she looks at the physical stresses players are undergoing off the court as well as on. She takes into account their training in the weight room, keeps an eye on joint function and range of movement, layers in travel and the impacts of jetlag, timezone changes, recovery windows.

“There’s no perfect science. There’s no magic number. There’s just information you can use to inform your decisions.”

The cost of success

The other challenge is the NBA’s gruelling schedule. During the regular season, which runs for 176 days, teams play at least three games per week.

Then, they enter the postseason, with qualifying teams progressing through the playoffs. This is what everyone wants, but it extends an already long season, placing greater demands on the players, the staff, everyone.

By the time the Thunder and Pacers got to Game 7, they’d been going for 268 days.

For Strickler, this means two things. One is “keeping a very big picture in mind, in the hope that we can sustain this type of physical output for 268 days.”

The second is breaking the schedule down into manageable pockets, helping the coaches understand what they need to achieve to support players’ health now and their performance later.

“A lot of what I do is just make sure the guys are getting the training they need to be able to periodise effectively for the whole season.”

Making connections

The Thunder has changed a lot in this time too. They lost some of their key players around the time Strickler came on board, meaning they needed to rebuild their roster, recruiting what has since become their star lineup: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren.

Over the last five years these players have coalesced into an unstoppable team, their energy and flair matched by the continuity they’ve found in the coaching and training staff.

“I don’t think we’re doing any of the data collection differently to any other team,” says Strickler, “but what we do at a very high level is the data connection.”

Here, it’s about getting the right information in the hands of the right people, and the trust that means those people actually use it.

“I started with a strength and conditioning coach at our G League team who’s now our director of rehabilitation and performance,” she continues. “And I started with a head coach at the G League team who’s now our head coach of the Thunder.

“We have grown up in this space together and built that trust over a decade.”

Winning the title

In this way, the Thunder’s championship run didn’t come from nowhere.

“What I realised when we won was just how many years of work had to go into something like that,” reflects Strickler. “How many refinements of processes across multiple people in an organisation had to click at the right time.”

Now that they have won, however, those processes are being put to new tests. Usually the team has a 12-week off-season to focus on player development, but their successful playoff run limited the time they had this year.

Strickler is up for the challenge.

“The thing that gets me excited about work every day is the fact that there’s always going to be a new and unique problem to solve.

“A lot of what we’re building is systems that are going to outlast the people and processes that are going to help cement a legacy.”

Dr Strickler's analysis on how basketball players spend their on-court time