Here’s what the light-up 3-point line on ABC games will look like
When the Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs square off on Saturday night, we’ll get our first look at something besides how Tyronn Lue and Gregg Popovich interact following the Spurs boss’ close-to-the-bone zinger about how the Cavs’ new head coach got his job. We’ll also get a glimpse of the maiden voyage of a new addition to ABC/ESPN’s game presentation that has some worried fans thinking back to the bad old days that our man Greg Wyshynski once wrote about.
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From The Associated Press:
ESPN said Thursday that it is using new technology to show viewers when a player attempts a jumper from beyond the 3-point arc. ”ESPN Virtual 3” will debut for Saturday’s matchup between the Cavaliers and Spurs.
For a made 3-pointer, the line will briefly remain lit up. For a miss, the illumination will end immediately.
In some quarters, the immediate response to the light-up line — which will be used on ABC’s Saturday night primetime games throughout the season — was, shall we say, cautious, with the general tone among basketball fans on Twitter seeming to tend toward, “Why do we need this again?”
The latest from the Overthinking Things Department: https://t.co/bEuYOJ2BTe pic.twitter.com/7mnXFRNDgN
— Taco Trey Kerby (@treykerby) January 28, 2016
@treykerby they know it’s in the same place every time, right?
— Amin Vafa (@AminNBA) January 28, 2016
And, moreover, it’s not like it’s hard to see that steady stripe on the hardcourt … except, of course, for when it is. From Sam Laird of Mashable:
“The idea has definitely grown over time. One good example of an aha! moment was the Ray Allen three-pointer during Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals on ABC,” Tim Corrigan, senior coordinating producer for the NBA on ESPN, told Mashable via email. “The shot he made in the near corner – when he made it, the first thing everyone wanted to know was, ‘Is that a three?’ This technology would have provided clarity and let the viewer definitively know it was a three-pointer, in the moment.
“More and more in the NBA, the near side coverage is blocked to the viewer,” Corrigan added. “Sometimes it’s fans standing on the court in that spot, so you can’t see the three-point line and it’s hard to make a judgment. We’re always trying to enhance the viewer experience and make what we do better, but in terms of one moment that jumps out – it would be the Allen shot.”
The idea, then, is to produce something closer to the yellow first-down stripe in football broadcasts than the famously obtrusive and diehard-discontenting FoxTrax glowing puck that Fox debuted in its NHL broadcasts 20 years ago. Here’s a before-and-after mockup of what the illuminated arc will look like after the shot goes up:
While the finished product won’t be available for public consumption until airtime, I was able to get a look at some footage of Virtual 3 in action, and while your mileage may vary, it seems undistracting enough — it basically looks like someone bolded the line while the shot’s up, and after it misses, it quickly reverts to the same size. (This sounds like a simple thing that was apparently very complicated to produce.) The first time I saw it triggered, my eyes instantly locked on the line rather than following the shot to the rim; after the second, though, I was back to watching the ball.
It’s entirely possible that, in pursuit of greater clarity on the comparatively smaller number of shots where a view’s obstructed or it’s unclear whether a player had his foot on the line, Virtual 3 winds up becoming an annoyance on the larger number of shots where it’s clear that the shooter was beyond the arc. (Especially now that Stephen Curry’s made it cooler for dudes to pull up from 30.) It’s weird to think that the best-case scenario for a labor-intensive new feature is that we mostly don’t really notice it, but that does seem to be the hoped-for outcome here; if aggregated public sentiment suggests that fans don’t find Virtual 3 as valuable an addition as ESPN hopes, if not after the initial run then after multiple bites at the apple, it’ll be interesting to see whether its broadcast use expands beyond Saturday nights, or if the next advancement in in-game tech winds up going the way of the glow puck before too long.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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