The NBA Finals have been wrapped up for just one week, but already the association is looking to the 2015-16 season. Even before the Golden State Warriors were crowned champions, the NBA announced a major change to their streaming League Pass service. Beginning next season, you’ll be given the option to purchase individual games or team packages, provided you’re out of the team’s local market.

As presently designed, the new League Pass will be compatible with computers — Windows and Mac — as well as Android and iOS devices. For those with Fire, Windows, Blackberry or other operating systems, you may be on the outside looking in. The NBA Game Time app (which is required to view League Pass on mobile devices) does support Amazon Fire devices, but support for Game Time was dropped for Windows devices in July of last year.

The importance of the NBA deciding to offer a more a la carte style cannot be understated, as now more light is cast on other sports leagues, particularly the NFL. As Engadget notes, the NFL is currently fighting a lawsuit from a fan regarding the limits of their Sunday Ticket service, specifically being forced to pay hundreds of dollars to see their favorite team 16 games per year even though they live thousands of miles away from the team’s location.

The murky waters of territorial or cable blackouts has been explored before, just ask a local Dodgers fan, and as Time Warner continues to lose money, it seems possible the 25-year and $8.3 billion dollar deal could get reworked. With sports fans and non-sports fans alike clamoring for an a la carte service, the answer could come not from a cable provider, but rather a group who knows a few things about entertainment in Sony.

During the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year, Sony announced an option purchase specific channels on their Playstation Vue services. It is an ambitious undertaking and perhaps Sony is simply dipping their toes in the water rather than diving right in the streaming market. Right now their Vue service is available in just five cities in the United States: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. Playstation 3 and 4 owners in those cities who are tired of the paying a cable bill can pick up a number of individual channels — or a more traditional package — including Fox Soccer, Showtime and Machinima for prices ranging from $3.99 to $14.99.

Given the push for a la carte services, a recent poll conducted by DigitalSmiths and posted via DSLReports shows an interesting trend. If sports fans are the driving force of streaming or pay-as-you-go streaming options, the survey had an interesting way of showing it.

ESPN ranked 20th among preferred channels, behind non-sports channels such as Animal Planet, Food Network and the History Channel. ABC and CBS ranked first and third respectively, however it would be a stretch to call those sports channels given their diverse programming. The same could be said for NBC (4th), Fox (7th), TBS (15th) and TNT (17th). Where ESPN was the first sports exclusive channel, both Fox Sports 1, NBC Sports, NFL Network, MLB Network plus the Golf Channel and Tennis Channel managed to make the list.

Kudos to the NBA for seizing an opportunity to gain new fans after a strong ratings performance in the finals. Perhaps more professional leagues or streaming service options will follow suit and offer a more personalized option.

(Header image via Wikipedia)

The first thing to keep in mind about Blast Motion’s sensor is that it’s not just designed for baseball. Yes, like the Diamond Kinetics SwingTracker, you can attach the sensor to the end of a bat to track swing speed and direction. And like the Zepp sensor, the Blast sensor can also be used to track a golf swing. But Blast’s approach revolved around designing a high-quality, general purpose sensor, and then building specific applications for baseball, basketball, golf, action sports, and athletic performance around it.

“We didn’t approach this as trying to design a swing sensor or a specific sport product,” senior director of marketing Donovan Prostrollo said. “What we designed it to do was to be a natural motion capture product, and then we applied that to different sports, so it doesn’t pigeonhole our product.”

At the heart of the Blast sensor are inertial measurement units (IMUs), the combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers that have become ubiquitous in devices like smartphones and tablets. But Blast has made two improvements to make the device more accurate. First, Blast Motion uses multiple IMU chips (although they wouldn’t disclose how many) to capture a wider range of movements. Second, the Blast sensor was also designed to use what founder Mike Bentley referred to as “tactical-grade” technology, a combination of more precise sensors, more processing power, and on-the-fly calibration that improves the device’s accuracy and consistency from one movement to the next.

But despite the intense technological focus, both Bentley and Prostrollo stressed the importance of keeping their outputs simple for the end user.

“You’ll find other solutions out there really overwhelm users with numbers, which is both good and bad, because if users don’t know which number to focus on, you’re not really helping them, you’re actually potentially making it worse,” Prostrollo said.

“At the end of the day, [the athletes] would love the technology to just completely disappear,” Bentley added. “And that’s one of the goals of Blast is how do we make the device disappear.”

When compared to other bat sensor apps, Blast lacks the three-dimensional rendering of the swing. Instead, the Blast app revolves around video, typically captured by setting the device on a tripod and automatically clipped so that only the events of interest are included. Prostrollo argued that the focus on video gave Blast an edge in capturing the entire movement, not just key metrics.

“We decided from the beginning to capture video and do it natively as part of the app so it’s really integrated into our DNA,” Prostrollo said. “And the cool thing about that is when you pair video and you compare the level of consistency out of our product it really does an amazing job.”

And Blast recently announced an adaptive slow-motion feature that adjusts the playback speed around the event.

“Basically, we know exactly when the impact occurred, when the swing started, and when the swing ended, and based on that we can speed up and slow down the video,” Prostrollo said. “We can also take the metrics and overlay them on top to get this dynamic fill, so it’s not just a metric in isolation.”

Blast verified the accuracy of its metrics using motion capture systems. As an example, Prostrollo said the system was within 1 mph of the motion capture system “85 percent of the time” and Bentley claimed that the Blast system “outperforms our optical system when you talk about rotational velocity” as verified by higher-end devices more commonly used to test aeronautical and military-grade IMUs.

Bentley and Prostrollo stressed not only the device’s accuracy but also the device’s consistency, so that identical swings or jumps would produce identical sensor readings. They attributed this consistency to improvements in their manufacturing process, and claimed it made a big difference to the professional athletes they collaborated with.

“The challenge is pro athletes absolutely can recognize that day one, the amateur athletes won’t necessarily realize that a product’s not as accurate as they want until it’s too late: they’ve purchased it, they’ve gone out, they’ve tried it, and they wonder why their swing speed varies by 6 mph when it’s all the same,” Prostrollo said.

Despite being a relatively new company, the founders of Blast Motion have been in the inertial sensor business for a quarter of a century. Before entering the sports world, their focus included military and medical products.

“This is not the first sensor we’ve ever manufactured,” Bentley said. “When we originally designed the sensors, it wasn’t for a single application. We wanted to be able to use the sensor and cross-pollinate across all applications.”

As Blast Motion began adapting its offerings for new markets, it worked with coaches, professionals, and other subject matter experts to design useful applications. But Bentley said there was a lot of overlap between the biomechanical elements underlying the different sports. Even more surprising, he said, was the overlap between social circles across different sports.

“What’s pretty unique about when you do get into the inertial world of working with different professional teams, how many baseball players work with professional golfers, and how many golfers play with hockey players,” Bentley said. “So the world is pretty small, and when you get a pretty exciting product, the word travels pretty fast in those worlds.”

The company currently works with a number of action sports ambassadors including Mike “Hucker” Clark and Greg Lutzka, as well as some NBA and MLB players they declined to name, citing confidentiality. And Blast Motion is working closely with bat manufacturer Easton as it gears up to release the Easton Power Sensor this summer. Little information is currently available about the project, but judging from the screenshots in the iTunes App Store, the interface at least will be very similar to Blast’s Baseball Replay app.

Looking to the future, Prostrollo said the biggest change would be not on the technological side but rather on the adoption side, as wearable sensors like Blast become more and more ubiquitous among both amateurs and pros.

“We’re at the point now where the average consumer has access to this technology, it’s no longer the pro athlete,” Prostrollo said. “What you’re going to see is a whole new generation of athletes leveraging the data and the technology, having a history to go back on, and really be able to do something very meaningful and different with that.”

It’s the return of the News Roundup. Here are some of the sports-tech stories we found interesting this week.

ESPN is issuing its first magazine cover featuring eSports. In fairness, it also features running back Marshawn Lynch, as he’s had his likeness added to the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops III. We’re not quite to the point where League of Legends players are gracing the front cover, but it’s a start.

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating look into how the people of Cuba are watching their favorite American television. Basketball, baseball, even HBO — it’s all broadcast not by satellite, but by sneaker.

As a dedicated lazy person and as a golfer that spends a lot of his time criss-crossing the fairways, the GolfBoard might be right in my wheelhouse.

You know all that cool 3D/interactive/holographic stuff that teams and facilities are installing? Soon, all that tech might come from part incubator, part tax write-off known as the Mark Cuban Center for Sports Media and Technology. Say what you will about the man, but sports and technology seem to be two of his stronger suits.

This is technically from last week, but if you didn’t get a chance to see American Pharoah race Secretariat, you should. It’s amazing what a little archival footage and some video syncing can do.

For some reason, people think it’s fun to mock pitcher Alex Torres for wanting to protect his melon. Strides are being taken to maintain protection while making hats look a little less puffy, and perhaps a similar product being adopted by a prominent soccer player will help people wanting to avoid head injuries seem a little more commonplace.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend. Be excellent to each other.

Look close at Wilson’s Wx “connected basketball,” and it’s hard to tell what’s so different about it until you spot the Bluetooth logo by the inflation valve.

“That is not something we usually deal with,” Wilson’s Vice President of Innovation Bob Thurman chuckled.

The ball was presented, along with an accompanying mobile app, at last month’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. Wilson developed the basketball in partnership with SportIQ, a Finnish company whose player tracking solution combines wearable sensors with synchronized video to help coaches analyze their teams’ performance.

When asked, SportIQ CEO Harri Hohteri (pictured above) was reluctant to talk about the “secret sauce” behind his company’s basketball. But he was quick to differentiate it from other smart sensor basketballs like 94Fifty’s.

“[The 94Fifty ball] was designed around shooting mechanics as a training tool,” Hohteri said. “But the first thing for us is the consumer side of things. We wanted to develop a professional-quality basketball.”

Hohteri, who played four professional seasons in Finland’s Korisliiga, insisted the feel of the basketball was of the utmost importance to players. “I can’t tell the difference between this and a game ball,” he said.

The quality of the basketball is further underscored by SportIQ’s partnership with the Korisliiga. For the third straight season, Finnish players are wearing the company’s sensors (and using its basketball) in league games. The data is used to automatically tag events in a synchronized video that Hohteri says coaches are using to track the efficiency of their offensive sets. And because it relies on sensors, the system doesn’t need the extensive camera setup used by STATS’ SportVU tracking system.

“It’s about doing things more efficiently,” Hohteri said. “That’s the whole idea. We can do the whole thing in real time with less manpower than teams are using now.”

But for those of us who aren’t running a professional basketball league, Wilson’s connected basketball is launching this year. The demo at the conference included a smartphone app (projected onto a television) that showed players their accuracy from various distances on the floor. A machine learning algorithm in the app detects makes and misses without the need for an additional sensor attached to the net, unique among smart basketball systems. Each distance stripe was color-coded, according to the percentage of shots made from anywhere in that arc.

SportIQ’s partnership with Wilson started in August 2012, when SportIQ first began its relationship with Finnish basketball. Because Wilson is the official basketball of the league, Hohteri approached Wilson’s innovations department about developing a smart basketball.

“At the same time, our business director was asking us for a way to measure makes and misses in the driveway to keep kids in the game,” Thurman said. “So we agreed that we would help engage them on tracking the basketball, and they would help us with this make/miss aspect.”

Thurman hopes the partnership between their companies will combine SportIQ’s intelligence with Wilson’s broad user base to “gamify” practice and inspire the next generation of basketball players.

“We want to activate 12-15 year old kids, to get them off the video games, and get them back in the park, to be more active,” Thurman said.

If we had the money to buy the licensing, there would be some trance music playing right now. In fact, do you have some on your computer? Yeah? Cool. play it. It’ll make this next part better. Ready?

Ladies and Gentlemen: It’s Tournament Time!

I know the NCAA Tournament technically started a few days ago, but I, like everyone else who isn’t a degenerate gambler or a fan of those First Four teams didn’t really give a crap. It all starts today. Once again, the Golden Gophers have no dog (or gopher) in the fight, but I’m excited nonetheless. It’s probably the greatest sporting event of the year, and you’ll probably want to follow along. We here at TechGraphs are here to help you keep up with all the latest goings on in the world of March Madness. Strap in.

On TV

Fun fact: They play NCAA Tournament games on TV now! In fact, if you have the right cable/satellite package, you can watch every game in the tournament. The games will be playing on CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV. You can find a complete TV listing (including scheduled announcers) here. Bookmark that. Print it out, save it to your Pocket account, clip it to Evernote, email it to yourself. That’s an important list.

Does it stink that you need a TV package to watch all the games? Yes. However, the channels needed usually come with fairly basic packages. You don’t need a special subscription like you would with NFL, MLB, or NHL games. It’s a bummer, but a much more affordable bummer than usual when it comes to these things.

If you don’t have/will not buy the requisite cable package, you can still get the CBS games with a digital antenna. Or, you could always mosey down to your favorite watering hole.

On the Web

There are actually two ways you can catch tournament games on the web this year. The first is the “old fashioned” way — directly from the NCAA. Every game will be available to stream. You will need to log in with your cable/satellite package credentials, however. Actually, I should clarify that you need to log in with someone’s credentials. If you plan on watching in the office, it might be a good idea to buy the person in charge of the firewall a gift card or something. Maybe from Newegg. Nerds friggin’ love Newegg. Oh, and don’t forget to use the Boss Button.

Thanks to the new Sling TV offering from Dish, you can watch most of the games online as well. Sling doesn’t offer CBS, so you’d need to do some input switching on your TV if you were interested in flipping back and forth. Sling’s main $20/month package comes with TBS and TNT, though the package that offers TruTV would be an extra $5. Sling has a free 7-day trial available, and can be streamed online via Mac or PC, as well as mobile devices and some connected devices. Check out the full rundown here.

On Your Phone/Tablet

Of course, the NCAA also offers March Madness Live apps for both iOS and Android that allows you stream games. The same TV package exceptions apply here, as well. If you have a good data plan and locked-down company Internet, this might be your best bet to catch games at work. It’s also a great option if your roommate/significant other would actually like to use the TV for once. Don’t be a tube hog. Hand over that remote and fire up the tablet.

If you are mostly interested in the fairings of a few teams, you should be able to set up alerts on your phone through your favorite scores app. I prefer the CBS Sports app, actually, but the ESPN or Yahoo! apps should work just fine. All of the above-mentioned apps will also allow you to set game-start notifications for those matchups you don’t want to miss.

Another app you can utilize is the Google app for either iOS or Android. Google knows what you want, so if you just type “ncaa tournament” in the search bar, it’ll give you all the scores you desire. It’s not quite as robust as some of the other apps, but it’s a quick and easy way to catch some scores.

Keeping Up with Your Bracket

There’s a very real chance you don’t actually want to watch all the games and you just care about your bracket. I fully support this. If you used an online bracket service (ESPN, CBS, Yahoo!), scores should be displayed on your bracket in real time. If your office isn’t keen on you sucking up all the bandwidth, but are fairly lax in letting you visit sports web sites, this is a good option.

If you only filled out a paper bracket, it’s free and easy to create one online just for your reference. Once you’ve done that, feel free to tell the pool organizer that he/she is fired.

Every bracket service has a corresponding mobile app as well, if you need to be even more discrete. The ESPN Tournament Challenge App even allows you to get notifications based specifically off your bracket. It’s a neat feature for when work is preventing you from staring at your phone for hours.

All-in-all, the NCAA Tournament has one of the best online offerings compared to the other major sports. Yes, you do need to pay for it, but there aren’t any silly blackout restrictions based on time or location. If you have a reasonable TV package you can stream all the games, no questions asked. Remember, as the competitors get knocked out, more and more games are played on CBS, which anyone can get for free. So if you can work a Sling trial for a week, you might be able to skate by. Or you can always buy a six pack and head to a friend’s house. Buzzer beaters and upsets are usually more fun with other people, after all.

(Header image via Rob Buenaventura)

Everybody has their own way of filling out their NCAA bracket. Some go by chalk, some pick a lot of upsets, some use computer models, some use coin flips. It’s a personal thing, filling out one’s bracket, and the great part is that none of them are wrong.

But there’s really two general ways to play. You can try and pick all the winners, or you can try and end up with the most points. Yes, if you pick the winner 100% of the time you will win your pool right before you are brought to the authorities because you are certainly a time traveling super villain. But if your goal is to win money or jellybeans or bragging rights, sometimes it’s better to play a little more fast and loose.

Wired posted their guide on using some simple math to help you find value picks for your bracket. The logic is fairly easy. The general population usually does pretty well on their bracket — about 80% correct or so. Nobody really thinks a 16 is going to beat a 1. Lots of second- and third-seeded teams are chosen. If you play online and look at who everyone else in your pool picked, you’ll see a lot of overlap. It’s just the way these things work. These things tend to get clumped together. But breaking away from that pack, and doing it smartly, might be the key to success.

Say Kentucky ends up running the table and taking the championship. Wired says about 50% of players on ESPN predict that will happen. If you picked Kentucky, good for you, but so did half of the people in your pool. So then the total points competition comes down to those random little games that happen in the rounds of 64 and 32. Your fate may very well ride on Stephen F. Austin State University. If you’re comfortable with that fate and confident in your picks, then by all means go for it. But if you want to get a little adventurous, try bucking some trends.

No, I’m not saying pick an upset for every game, but the way Wired lays it out makes sense. Some teams (based on the total picks vs. their expected win probability) are tremendously overrated. Some are flying under the radar. It’s a gamble, but leaning on those big discrepancies can help you stand out in your pool. Being the only one to pick Utah to make the Final Four is a risk. If they do manage to squeak it out, however, chances are you’ll be one of the only people who picked them to do so. If your pool uses a points system based on round, you’re in an even better position.

The Internet makes it so easy to end up in some giant pool that a friend of a friend invited you to join. If you’re comfortable in your method, stick with it. Chances are you’ll end up in that big group of players in the middle when all is said and done. But remember, that chunk doesn’t end up in the money. Luck helps, but you need to take chances to win these things. Fighting groupthink seems like a good way to do so. Does this mean I picked Villanova to win it all? I did! Is that because I know nothing about college basketball and this seemed like a reasonable approach? It is!

Of course, you may know more about the sport than I. Trust your instincts, but don’t be afraid to blaze your own trail every so often.

(Header image via Chad Cooper)

With millions of people filling out NCAA brackets and no doubt millions of, let’s say “jelly beans” being wagered, why not try to get the inside track on the opening round games? With thanks to WhatIfSports and their basketball simulation system (as well as Yahoo! for the bracket), we have the four play-in games plus the 32 opening round games predicted.

To participate in the premium features of WhatIfSports — such as creating or joining a sim league or dynasty — there is a fee. However, the NCAA single game matchup sim is free. Though no word on their methodology behind the sim (what stats are weighed, how heavily, is it a Monte Carlo, etc.) I’ll share my methods. I used the neutral court option and ran each team once. Small sample size is an issue, and rather than spend hours running a full simulation, like the tournament, I’m sticking with the one-and-done style. With that out of the way, lets take a look at the play-in games!

Hampton wins a fairly one-sided matchup, keeping Manhattan at arms length in the first and second half.

Our second play-in game is much more competitive, with Boise State narrowly defeating Dayton.

Robert Morris couldn’tkeep pace with North Florida, getting doubled up on points in the first half. Though they won the second half, it wasn’t enough to overcome the early hole and UNF advances to the field of 64.

Our first power conference team is eliminated in Ole Miss, going down to BYU by doubt digits.

The rest of the results can be found in the brackets below, though note some of opening round upsets. In the Midwest bracket we see Buffalo beating out West Virginia for the classic 5/12 upset and Valparaiso downing Maryland. The upsets continue in the bottom half of the bracket with Butler dropping to Texas.

Moving on to the East bracket, a problem arose. Unfortunately the system did not have Northern Iowa’s 2014-15 season on file, so Wyoming got the upset by default. Boise State toppled Providence for their second win of the tournament and while Virginia beat Belmont, it was a five point game.

History was immediately made in the West bracket, as 16-seed Coastal Carolina shocks the world and beats Wisconsin! BYU defeats Xavier in another upset to finish the surprises for the day.

Events unfolded without much surprise in the upper half of the South bracket. Suddenly UCLA downed SMU, Iowa State fell to UAB and Davidson defeated Iowa, all upsets.

Clearly the surprise was for the first time ever a 1-seed, Wisconsin, lost in their opening game. Whether or not this proves to come true remains to be seen, but this bracket will probably do better than the one I filled out.

(Header image via Wikipedia)

Apple once again took the tech news industry hostage today, as their Spring Forward event promised to bring new insights into a few of their current products as well as the much anticipated Apple Watch. They announced an HBO partnership with the (now cheaper) Apple TV, an incredibly thin new MacBook, and also previewed ResearchKit — a new way for health professionals to crowd source medical research. But the biggest buzz leading up to the event was Apple’s new wearable, and the folks from Cupertino certainly made that a highlight of the presentation. We don’t know all the specifics yet, but sports fans and fitness nerds should have at least a few things to look forward to.

The biggest fitness app really isn’t an app at all, but a built-in feature to the watch. Apple Watch is chock full of fitness and activity tracking options including a workout app, basic step and burned-calorie counters, and will even feature reminders alerting you when it’s time to stand up and walk around a little.

Third-party apps will also be available for tracking fitness. Offerings from Nike+ Running, Strava, and Runtastic are also being featured on Apple’s web site. Data from Watch will be synced with these services, allowing users more access to and control over their data.

So far, only two apps for sports fans have been announced — MLB At Bat and ESPN. Both will feature team-/game-based notifications and general scoreboard functions, while the At Bat app promises player stats, news, and even highlights. I have to admit, watching highlights on a watch would be pretty cool.

Apple has released the iOS update that features the Apple Watch app, but as of this writing access to the Watch App Store was not available. Nevertheless, the Watch API has been out for some time, so it’s easy to assume there will be plenty more offerings above what has been announced today. We’ll keep you updated as soon as we get any more info.

The Apple Watch will be available for preorder on April 10th, with units becoming available on April 24th.

The network powers that be — CBS, TNT, truTV and TBS — have created an official YouTube channel in preparation for March Madness. By subscribing to the channel you can receive email updates on new content ranging from highlights, best moments and more.

Right now the channel has videos from last year, though according to the press release it will feature highlights and clips from all 67 games this year. Specifically it says real-time highlights and video recaps, though unfortunately the games themselves will not be streamed. The live coverage will only consist of analysis and post-game press conferences and is not related to CBS’ current All Access subscription service.

Vice president of business operations for Turner Sports, Mark Johnson is encouraged by this new foray into the YouTube realm.

“Our new partnership with YouTube gives college basketball fans more ways to discover and watch the plays and storylines that everyone will be talking about during March Madness. Tapping into the power and reach of YouTube’s video platform opens up new opportunities for us to grow interest and consumption of March Madness.”

Given the lucrative TV ad revenue, it is no surprise the governing powers would want to rock the cash boat. Via Statista, in both 2013 and 2014 the revenue surpassed the $1 billion mark.

No surprise the NCAA and the broadcast partners wouldn’t be eager to ditch that sort of money and go to streaming option where things like Ad Block Plus can remove advertisements. This channel may be a step in the right direction with limited live coverage, but cord cutters will still be forced to look elsewhere for the games.

(Header image via truTV)

After CES back in January, everyone seemed to leave talking about two things — wearables and VR. We covered the first section, since that’s more of our bag. But we stayed away from VR for the most part since all the booths and presentations and talks mainly revolved around gaming. Companies were betting big on the idea that players wanted to feel totally immersed in the game, like they were right there. And judging by the long lines and big smiles at the Oculus Rift booth, this is the case. Now, the technology that seems to pair so well with gaming (yes, and porn) is making a move into professional sports.

According to Wired, the NBA is teaming up with Samsung to offer a VR experience for this year’s All-Star Game. Using cameras from BigLook360, the All-Star Game, the three point contest, the dunk contest, and even a dunk contest practice session will be captured.

The downside is that it won’t be streamed live. This is a technology that exists, but not one that the NBA and Samsung will be utilizing. The NBA says the footage (more of a highlights package, not the entire event) will be available a few weeks after the game. It will be offered, for free, on Samsung’s Milk VR Store. This means that the experience will only be offered to Samsung smartphone users, though there are ways to get the VR Store on other Android devices with some rooting magic.

It’s great to see the NBA venturing into the VR sphere so early in the game. Everyone seems to be pretty sure that VR is going to create some mini singularity, and we won’t understand how people lived before it existed. So while it’s new and weird and only accessible to a few people now, I imagine those who download the free footage (and purchase the not-free Gear VR Headset) will be quite impressed by the experience. And that’s what Samsung is really selling. Yes it’s trying to sell VR headsets — and to a lesser extent, phones — but it’s really trying to sell you the VR headset it releases in two years when VR is actually good. Games are a way to do that, but there are many different sectors that can get sold on the future of VR. Someone finally figured out a way to bring sports into the fold.

Providing a VR NBA experience isn’t going to catapult the technology into the mainstream. Honestly, it’s not polished enough yet. But you can get by on buzz a lot longer that you used to, and VR has that going for it in spades. Samsung is just hoping you’ll remember that solid they did for you when it’s your turn to buy into the hype.

(Image via SamsungTomorrow)