Nex Team, the parent company of basketball shot-tracking app HomeCourt, has made its product free to all users in response to the global coronavirus pandemic. HomeCourt made the announcement late last week as part of its #stayinthegame campaign that includes a #stopthespread PSA.
“The No. 1 thing we had in our mind was, How do we support our community in this time in the fastest way possible?” says Alex Wu, a founding team member and VP at Nex Team.
HomeCourt, which launched in 2018, harnesses artificial intelligence and computer vision to turn a mobile iOS device into an app tracking a variety of basketball skills: shooting, dribbling, agility and more. The app has been featured in an Apple keynote, partnered with the NBA and received the 2019 SportTechie award for Outstanding Technology of the Year.
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The new app release is truly free and won’t collect any credit card info through the end of the initiative, which is scheduled to last until at least April 30 but may be extended. The broader #stayinthegame effort features three sub-campaigns to help users stay active, stay ready and stay relevant. NBA and WNBA players are also challenging each other on social media to complete certain drills; Sue Bird and Steve Nash, a HomeCourt investor, were among the first to participate.
The “stay active” component is primarily geared toward youth who no longer have the structure of school or team sports to encourage fitness. Some HomeCourt drills don’t even require a basketball. Wu calls attention to a recent video shared on the app’s Instagram page of an adorable 4-year-old girl completing some basic exercises while her family is homebound in Osaka, Japan.
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“The nature of our platform is making mobile artificial intelligence accessible to everybody,” Wu says. “The way we’ve been thinking about it since Day One is, How do we digitize physical education? It’s coming front and center right now.”
Not only have practices, games and seasons been postponed or canceled, but tournaments, showcases and camps have also been scrapped. HomeCourt wants to help athletes “stay ready” by honing the different facets of their game. Prior to the pandemic, HomeCourt unveiled its skill ratings to gamify that pursuit. “Think about it as an NBA2K profile,” Wu says. “We have different [metrics] we can track your workouts on—free throws, 3-point shooting, agility, dribbling, etc.—based on your activity in the app.”
In the absence of most formal instruction, HomeCourt is bolstering its library of resources. It will host webinars and post Q&As with coaches and trainers to share case studies and best practices for remote instruction. “It’s an asynchronous way to run a virtual camp, if you will,” Wu says. “[The app] wasn’t intentionally designed to be like that, but people get pretty creative as these situations arise.”
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HomeCourt hopes to achieve the final component, “stay relevant,” through its partnership with the NBA and the global scout program to find overlooked talent. In addition to the sport-specific drills, HomeCourt can measure other attributes such as handspan, wingspan and vertical jump. “Basically we created a virtual draft combine,” Wu says. Users can share their profile with the league; the original plan had been to compile info for possible invitations to showcases but, for now, the results will get stored in a database for future opportunities.
Just as the professional world is adapting and using video conferences to replace in-person business meetings, so too is the sports industry seeking continuity without physical events. HomeCourt is helping to fill that gap. As Wu says with a laugh, “Somebody referenced us as, ‘You guys are going to be like the Zoom for basketball.’ ”
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