So, I got this wild idea the other day to mess around with tracking NBA players on the court. I’ve always been a huge basketball fan, and I’ve dabbled a bit with coding, so I thought, “Why not combine the two?” I’m calling it “nba camera” just for simplicity.

First things first, I needed some footage. I grabbed a few game clips online – nothing fancy, just some regular broadcast recordings. I figured that would be enough to get me started, a good raw material you can find it every conner.
Then came the tricky part: actually getting the computer to “see” the players.I started playing with some basic object detection * was clunky at first, I won’t lie. My initial attempts had the computer confusing referees for players, and sometimes even the basketball itself got * is a hard try and fail process.
I spent hours, tweaking the settings, changing parameters, it’s like baby steps. Finally, I started to get some decent results! The computer started reliably identifying players, drawing little boxes around them on the screen. It wasn’t perfect, players would sometimes disappear behind each other, or the boxes would flicker, but it was a start!
Main Progress is Here
- Downloaded game footage.
- Used a basic object detection.
- Tweaked settings for better player detection.
I’m not gonna get into the super-technical details, because, to be honest, I’m still figuring a lot of that out myself. But the basic idea is to train the computer to recognize what a basketball player looks like, based on the video frames. it’s my understanding now.
Now, just detecting the players isn’t enough.I wanted to actually track them. I added some code to give each player a unique ID, and then tried to follow that ID across multiple * is where things got really interesting, because the players are constantly moving, changing directions, and getting in each other’s way.

The tracking is still a bit wonky. Sometimes the computer loses track of a player, or swaps IDs between two players who get too close. But other times, it works like a charm! I can watch a player drive to the basket, and the computer keeps the little box perfectly centered on them, even as the camera angle changes. It’s pretty cool to see!
This is far from a finished project. It’s more like a fun little experiment that I’m tinkering with in my spare time. I’m learning a ton along the way, and it’s pretty satisfying to see it all come together, bit by bit. Maybe one day, I’ll have a super-accurate NBA player tracking system, but for now, I’m just happy to be making progress and learning something new. It’s all about the journey, right?