In a Reddit AMA conducted by new Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer (who describes the acquisition as “not awesome and not bad” financially) and Harvard computer science professor David Parkes, the duo discuss the intersection of basketball and technology. An excerpt

“Question:

I was wondering what you feel the future is for technology in basketball?

Steve Ballmer:

There is a lot more tech than I knew changing basketball and the sports fan experience broadly. My favorite is the use of machine learning technology to process game videos from the celling to understand, categorize and analyze game play. One of the ML experts at second spectrum was a 6″9″ Hooper from MIT so so cool ML rocks! The tech can help understand almost anything. Harvard CS will use it and other technologies to transform so many fields and maybe even more for sports.

David Parkes:

Harvard researchers in the school of engineering and applied sciences and statistics are working on probabilistic models to predict the outcome of a particular matchup of two players on the court. Just this week in my class we discussed the use of Markov chains to predict the outcome of NCAA games. Harvard rocks!”

____________________________

Don Knuth, the “Electronic Coach,” in 1959: