No offseason in recent memory has electrified a league quite like the NBA’s whirlwind summer, which Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie summed up in a recent tweet: “Everybody feels like they’ve got a chance at a chip. What A Time.”
Dinwiddie, of course, feels that way because Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are teaming up with him in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George are headed west to join the new-look Clippers, and Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul and Jimmy Butler are on a long list of other notable players who have switched jerseys either through trades or free agency. The epicenter of these seismic shifts can be traced back to Durant, who ruptured his right Achilles tendon in Game 5 of the NBA Finals and then left the Warriors after they fell to the Raptors in six.
“This is something that we’re going to continue developing and continue to refine,” Ahmed says. “It’s inevitable that over time, with enough data, you’ll be able to help predict injuries.”
As the newscycle churned forward with each new roster move, most quickly forgot that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had sent out a series of Tweets after Durant’s injury—which will keep him sidelined next season—calling for the NBA and NBPA to “invest in research into diagnostic tools that allow for proactive analysis of tendons and ligaments.”
But not Will Ahmed, the CEO of WHOOP who says several pro teams are “actively using” his company’s burgeoning injury risk-assessment technology.
“We are working on a risk index that we actually share with a number of our professional teams that is able to say that an individual is at risk for injury,” Ahmed told SportTechie in a recent interview. “This is something that we’re going to continue developing and continue to refine. It’s inevitable that over time, with enough data, you’ll be able to help predict injuries.
Ahmed wouldn’t specify which teams are trying out the risk-assessment tech, nor would he even reveal which sports. But several NBA players have been known to wear WHOOP since 2017 (though the league prohibits the device in games). In March 2018, WHOOP announced a $25 million Series C fundraising round that included investments from former NBA commissioner David Stern and none other than Durant himself.
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Major League Baseball allows players to wear WHOOP during games; the NFL does not. However, the NFLPA struck a deal with WHOOP in early 2017 to give every player access to a WHOOP 2.0 device. That device is typically worn as a wristband and is capable of monitoring sleep, recovery and strain. This past May, WHOOP released its 3.0 strap, which will be provided to NFL players starting in August. The upgraded device has a five-day battery life and a new feature called WHOOP Snap. The Snap feature allows users to overlay data on photos or videos recorded in the WHOOP mobile app. Ahmed expects the social media-friendly feature to help attract a wider consumer audience.
“Say you had a big-strain workout. You can take a picture of yourself with your strain,” Ahmed says. “Then I could actually send [it] to Instagram or send it to my friends. That’s the kind of functionality—that’s kind of fun that our audience likes a lot.”
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Ahmed envisions a future in which many of the NFL’s and NBA’s most-pressing issues around player health and performance can be managed by tracking WHOOP data. “[In the NFL] it’s a question of, ‘Is Thursday night football a good idea? Could the season be 18 regular-season games? Are the London trip and the Mexico trip good ideas?” he says.
“The NBA has some real questions that are similar. Should you be allowed to just rest the star during a random regular-season game? Maybe that protects the star’s long-term ability to play,” he adds. “Maybe it makes the likelihood of his career longer, but [it] sucks for the fans that paid X-dollars that night expecting to see a superstar. If you’re not collecting 24/7 data on sleep, recovery, and exercise, you’re not really making an informed decision around these things.”
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