Powering Smarter Performance Decisions with AI in the NBA

Contributors: Kevin Carlino, Management Consulting Principal; Tyler Powell, Sr Data Engineer; and Haeon Yoon, Sr Consultant

The tip-off

Winning in the NBA doesn't just come down to what happens under the lights. It starts in the training room, the weight room and the data room.

One NBA franchise teamed up with World Wide Technology (WWT) to rethink how they collected, accessed and acted on player performance and health data. With data scattered across systems and time-consuming manual workflows, the organization needed a faster way to connect dots, spot patterns and make the right call—before tip-off, in real time and long after the final buzzer.

The mission: build a unified, AI-enabled analytics platform on Google Cloud that puts the ball in every decision-maker's hands.

The challenge

The team's performance and medical departments had no shortage of data from tracking movement, measuring strength and logging recovery, but insights were harder to come by. Different systems spoke different languages. Reports took time to build. Key questions often went unanswered until it was too late to change the game plan.

Everyone, from coaches to sports scientists to executives, wanted to know:

Who's peaking, and who's approaching overload?
What's really moving the needle on wins?
How can we get ahead of risk before it turns into an injury?
How do my top players compare to all-stars around the league?

Without a centralized system or an intuitive way to explore their data, every decision felt like playing defense.

The assist: Google Cloud + WWT

WWT stepped in to design and implement a centralized data platform on Google Cloud, giving the organization a single source of truth for all things performance.

Built using key Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services like BigQuery and Dataplex, the environment brought together a wide range of player and health data in one place that was secure, organized and ready to power the next level of insights.

But we didn't just organize the playbook. We gave teams the tools to run smarter plays with AI at their fingertips.

The game changer: Explore Assistant and Conversation Analytics

Enter Explore Assistant and Conversation Analytics, Google's natural language tools that brought a new level of speed and simplicity to the franchise's analytics playbook.

With these tools, performance staff and executives alike could ask questions like:

"How did acceleration patterns shift across our last three-game stretch?"
"What's the workload trend for Player X leading into back-to-back games?"
"When we win, what are the metrics that consistently show up?"
"How does my starting five impact my sales revenue on game day?"

No more waiting on dashboards. No need to translate business questions into SQL. Just fast, accurate answers on demand.

It was like having a seasoned point guard guiding every decision—someone who could see the whole court, anticipate what's coming next, and deliver the right insight at just the right time.

The impact

This wasn't just about better reports. It was about changing how the team played the game behind the scenes.

Sports scientists could adjust workloads in real time, while medical teams used data-driven insights to spot risks early and keep injuries off the board.
Coaches could make smarter lineup decisions, backed by live data, not just gut instinct.
Executives had instant visibility into trends, risks and what was driving wins.
Analysts were freed up to focus on deeper strategy, not repetitive reporting.

The result? A team that could move faster, think sharper and stay one step ahead, no matter who they were facing on the court.

And with a scalable foundation built on GCP, this approach is ready to grow with the team's vision—whether that's new data sources, predictive models, or supporting other departments across the organization.

Final score

Every possession matters. Every insight counts.

With Google Cloud's AI-powered tools and WWT's data expertise, this NBA franchise turned fragmented information into a fluid system of decision-making—one where performance, health and strategy all speak the same language.

For any organization looking to win with data, the playbook is ready.