BASKETBALL AI
Welcome Readers,
In this this edition, we review the Sherpa Sports platform that unifies NIL, pro contracts, scouting, recruiting, and financial operations into one secure, AI powered system. We’ll share some news on two basketball apps and take a look at a new defensive metric.
Plus…we just dropped a new Guide; Turn Coaching Thoughts into Interactive Mind Maps and Video Overviews.
In this issue:
Modernizing Basketball Front Offices: Sherpa Sports Intelligence Platform
Swish Basket Secures $3.2M Pre-Seed, Targets $8M Seed Round
Ballology Launches All New App
Points Suppressed (xPS) Better Than Steals or Blocks?
Turn Coaching Thoughts into Interactive Mind Maps and Video Overviews
Let’s Go
INTEGRATED INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM
🧐 Modernizing Basketball Front Offices: Inside Sherpa Sports’ Intelligence Platform
Overview: Tons of data, rapid roster turnover, Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals, and evolving financial regulations. Basketball front offices from NCAA programs to NBA and WNBA franchises face unprecedented operational complexity.
Sherpa Sports is solving this fragmentation by offering a unified, AI powered sports intelligence platform. Designed to connect every department under one digital roof, Sherpa eliminates scattered spreadsheets and disjointed tools to give basketball executives, coaches, and compliance officers a single source of truth.
Details: Key Details & Platform Capabilities
Sherpa centralizes the entire front office workflow into four deeply integrated core modules:
Scouting & Recruiting: Manage talent acquisition end-to-end. The platform unifies prospect profiles, automates communication threads, simplifies offer letter workflows, and applies predictive AI insights to track recruiting pipelines seamlessly.
NIL & Pro Contracts: Built for the complexities of professional deals and NIL endorsement management, Sherpa delivers full deal lifecycle tracking, automated e-signatures, clause libraries, and version control.
Financial Operations & Cap Management: Designed to handle roster economics, Sherpa provides real time budget tracking, athlete payment workflows, and AP/AR integrations. Professional clubs gain clear visibility into salary cap management and player contract structures, while college programs can manage department spending effortless.
Automated Compliance & Insights: Built-in NCAA, FERPA, and league-level guardrails automatically monitor regulatory changes, enforce policies, and maintain real-time audit trails to safeguard programs from potential violations.
Why It Matters: Basketball operations are moving fast. Decisions around a transfer portal target, salary cap room, or an urgent NIL agreement happen in hours, not weeks. Sherpa streamlines decision making up to 3× faster while cutting software fragmentation by 70%.
By bringing scouting, contract execution, cash flow, and regulatory tracking into one secure ecosystem, Sherpa allows basketball programs to mitigate compliance risks, save valuable administrative time, and focus on what matters most: building winning rosters and developing athlete talent.
During a recent live demo hosted by CEO DJ Johnson, Dan Barto and I (Terry Frederick) got a firsthand look at how the Sherpa platform functions in real time. We both came away thoroughly impressed by its ability to integrate and streamline complex front office operations data into a single, intelligent workflow and dashboard.
Sound like a solution for your Team? Contact Sherpa Sports, Mention Basketball AI and and get 20% off.
BASKETBALL APP
💶 Swish Basket Secures $3.2M Pre-Seed, Targets $8M Seed Round
Overview: AI sports-tech startup Swish Basket has raised $3.2 million in pre-seed funding, led by Aristagora VC with participation from Peter Kadas, Nika Capital, and RGE Group. Selected for the 2026 NBA Launchpad cohort, the Tel Aviv based startup is already targeting an $8 million seed round closing in October 2026 to accelerate global expansion.
Details:
Swish turns standard basketball hoops into smart infrastructure using overhead camera and LiDAR enabled sensors.
The technology tracks shot accuracy, ball trajectory, and player biomechanics without requiring wearables.
Utilizing facial recognition, it automatically syncs stats from multi-player sessions to individual app profiles.
Swish operates on a B2B SaaS model charging venues, schools, and camps $2,000 annually per hoop while providing a free gamified platform with global leaderboards for players.
Why It Matters: By combining computer vision with affordable hardware, Swish offers an accessible alternative to expensive smart courts. Its scalable model creates connected global basketball infrastructure, unlocking unified performance data for athletes, facilities and scouts.
✅ Poll: What Content Should We Focus On in the Basketball AI Newsletter?
- Industry & Tech News: League deals, AI tools, and commercial partnerships
- Research & Use Cases: Applied sports tech, breakdown of academic/industry papers, and real-world implementations
- Executive & Strategic Insights: Advisory, startup playbooks, and business-of-basketball trends
- Technical Guides & Workflow Tutorials: Hands-on builds and data/AI setup guides
BASKETBALL APP
✨Ballology Launches All New App
Overview: Ballogy Inc. has launched its all new mobile application. Serving over 300,000 athletes, coaches, and teams, the revamped platform centers around MTR (Move, Train, Recover), a first of its kind AI powered framework designed to turn daily athletic effort into actionable performance data.
Details: The updated platform addresses every stage of an athlete’s journey:
Move: Converts daily activity data into actionable habits that extend past the gym.
Train: Utilizes patented computer vision AI to count weight room reps, track sport specific drills, and generate real time shot heat maps.
Recover: Guides cool downs, monitors sleep and rest, and recommends smart recovery plans.
To build a complete physiological profile, Ballogy integrates seamlessly with major health wearables, including Apple Health, Garmin, Fitbit, Oura, and WHOOP. Additional features include a digital recruiting profile with verified AI metrics, global skill leaderboards, a drill library, and an in app community feed for sharing progress and highlight reels.
Why It Matters: Athletic growth extends far beyond practice hours. By consolidating workout, biometric, and recovery metrics into a single unified platform, Ballogy eliminates data silos and provides young athletes with holistic insights previously reserved for pros.
ANALYTICS
✋🏼 Points Suppressed (xPS) Better Than Steals or Blocks?
Overview: Box score stats like steals and blocks capture only a fraction of defensive impact. Spatial analytics evaluate Expected Points Suppressed (xPS) measuring how effectively defenders deny high value shot locations, alter shooter mechanics and close off driving lanes without necessarily making contact with the ball.
Details: Although not available in public databases, xPS is a conceptual metric and aggregate framework that combines raw Second Spectrum spatial tracking, expected field goal percentage (xFG%) models and shot location data. Shot suppression can be measured through three main components:
Opponent Rim Frequency & Differential (Deterrence): Measures how often opponents shoot at the rim when the player is on the floor and how much lower their percentage is than expected.
Isaiah Hartenstein: Opponents shoot -7.8% below their expected FG% within 6 feet when he anchors the paint. His drop positioning reduces opponent rim frequency attempts by over 4% per 100 possessions, effectively wiping out ~2.5 to 3.0 expected points per game strictly through deterrence.
Contest Quality & Shot Alteration (Perimeter Contest): Measures how closely a defender contests without fouling, transforming high value open threes into low value contested attempts.
Derrick White: Holds opponents to -4.2% below expected FG% across all contested jump shots. By contesting over 85% of perimeter shots in his zone and reducing opponent open 3-point frequency, his positioning suppresses an estimated 1.8 to 2.2 expected points per game compared to a league average guard.
Shot Clock Decaying & Lineup Suppression (Point of Attack): Tracks how effectively a defender delays offensive execution, forcing shots late in the clock where expected points per possession (PPP) drop significantly.
Cason Wallace: When Wallace serves as the primary point of attack defender, opponents spend an average of 2.4 extra seconds initiating their primary action. This forces late clock isolations where the opponent's expected yield drops from 1.15 PPP down to < 0.85 PPP , accounting for a suppression of ~1.5 to 2.0 expected points per game.
All three players rank in the 95th percentile or higher league wide in total points suppressed, despite none of them leading the NBA in total steals or blocks.
Why It Matters: Front offices that leverage off ball spatial metrics and shot suppression modeling can build better defensive units. Recognizing how deterrence and contest quality affect expected outcomes allows teams to acquire elite, low usage anchors and perimeter rotators at a fraction of the cost of high volume block or steal chasing stars.
NEW GUIDE
💬 Turn Coaching Thoughts into Interactive Mind Maps and Video Overviews
Overview: Your coaching ideas may be epic, but linear speech is slowing you down! In our new Guide, Turn Coaching Thoughts into Interactive Mind Maps and Video Overviews, learn how to unlock Gemini NotebookLM to transform raw source archives into interactive Mind Maps and AI narrated Video Overviews in under 5 minutes!
Details : Gather 4 to 8 core documents such as your philosophy, team standards, practice plans and season calendar. Add a typed "Coach's Note" or voice memo. Plug them into Gemini NotebookLM, configure a direct coaching persona, and choose from four custom audio formats (Deep Dive, Brief, Critique, or Debate) to handle player onboarding, staff alignment and recruiting.
What You Will Create:
Interactive Mind Maps: Visual wall charts to completely align your staff.
Player Facing Concept Videos: High impact, under 8 minute Whiteboard videos players can watch right before practice.
End of Season Diagnostics: A total visual breakdown of your full season archive to see your real priorities.
Program Vision Presentations: 15 minute, evidence backed video decks to blow away search committees!
Why It Matters: Coaching transfers best visually and you no longer need a massive design budget to pull it off. Download the guide now to crush practice prep and win over recruits.
[DOWNLOAD THE FREE GUIDE BELOW]
🛠 Tools Spotlight:
Tools mentioned in this edition:
Sherpa Sports - Sherpa is the intelligence layer connecting data, workflows, and people across scouting, recruiting, contracts, NIL and financial operations.
Swish Basket - Swish blends AI technology to transform shooting and game skills during practice and game time.
Ballology - Ballogy turns effort into data and data into development for athletes, coaches and teams at every level.
Gemini NotebookLM - AI research tool and thinking partner that can analyze your sources, turn complexity into clarity and transform your content.
Basketball AI - Free website access to guides, tools, research, and more!
📰 Everything Else in Basketball AI:
On Roster Construction & Using AI/Analytics
"You can't build a competitive roster today without treating it like a front office operation. Every roster decision now comes with a price tag. Analytics gives us a clear picture of who fits, who moves, and where we should focus — so we're not wasting time or money."
📆 Upcoming Conferences, Events and Latest Guides:
August 18, 2026 Previous issue of Basketball AI
Latest Basketball Guides:
Conferences:
SportsPro AI + Tech (London, UK) September 29–30, 2026. Deep dive into AI applications, machine learning, data architecture, streaming technology, and digital transformation in sports.
Leaders Week London (London, UK) October 7–8, 2026. Executive-level global sports business conference with significant coverage on tech innovation, performance data, and digital transformation.
Wharton Sports Business Summit (Philadelphia, PA) October 16, 2026. Blends sports business, data-driven decision making, and sports marketing strategies.
Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Conference (CMSAC) (Pittsburgh, PA), October 23–24, 2026. One of the premier academic and professional analytics gatherings in North America, featuring player tracking research, tactical analysis, and research presentations across major sports leagues.
SBJ Dealmakers & Media Innovators (New York, NY) November 18, 2026. Sports Business Journal's spotlight on tech investments, data valuation, and broadcasting technologies.
That’s a wrap for this edition. The next newsletter will be published Tuesday September 15, 2026.
Tell us what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve it for you.
Until next time, Terry and Dan