Weekly Watson: Playing Hoops with the Raptors
February 16, 2016
The Raptors do not have Stephen Curry on their team. The Raptors do have IBM Watson. I read “Raptors Team Up with IBM Supercomputer Watson to Analyze Player Talent.” The idea is that the basketball loving Canadians (no the game is not played on ice) will have a more effective squad with Watson in the locker room.
Watson is not a disturbance. The new team member is more of a cloud thing. As a result, Watson is everywhere, which addresses some of the problems in the Raptors’ line up.
According to the article:
…they’re [the basketball team] hoping that recruiting some help from a supercomputer will help Toronto take them to the next level.
I have had limited exposure to NBA professionals and managers. That experience suggested that supercomputers were absolutely one of the primary interests of those involved. None of this fashion, exotic cars, and friendly fans. Nope. Throughput, massive parallelism, and fresh approaches to machine learning were the chatter on and off the court.
A whiteboard with Xs and Os. Nope. Math equations for optimizing statistical anomalies when processing real time data like how many times the announcers said, “He drained that shot.”
I envision the announcers saying:
Watson mods the open source code. A quick call to Vivisimo and then more of those old Almaden home brew moves. It’s up. A miss. The Raptors lose again at the buzzer. Bummer.
Watson, in the post game interview, says, “My bad.”
Meanwhile the Golden State Warriors keep on winning.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2016
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