Drivers attack faster, and a pass takes as long as the throw

basketball.casa is a basketball league where every game is simulated. Nobody scripts the plays. Each one comes out of who the players are at that moment: how tall, fast and tired they are, what they can see, and what they decide. You can watch any game back exactly as it happened. This update makes the drive to the basket quicker and the space around it cleaner.

Faster to the rim

A driver with the ball now gets to the basket noticeably quicker. Across our test games the average driver moves at about 2.1 metres a second, up from about 1.9. Real drivers in the tracking data we check the league against average close to 3, so there is still ground to make up, and the rest of it comes from the finish: today a driver still gathers and rises from a stop, where a real one carries the run into the jump.

More drives now get past their defender: about 45 in every hundred, up from about 33, near the 40 or so measured in real games. Nobody turned a dial to get there: it comes out of each driver's legs and the room the other bodies leave them.

A pass takes as long as the throw

Until now a pass left the moment the passer decided to throw it. Now deciding and throwing are two things: the ball leaves the hand only once the arm has done its work, and everyone's runs after the pass start from that moment, not from the thought. In a replay the ball stays in the passer's hands for that moment before it flies.

The same honesty reaches the shot. A shot can never leave the hands before the shooter's body has risen to the top of their jump, however quick their release.

Defenders keep their spacing

Two defenders are never sent to the same spot any more; the second one stands a body's width away. A defender who has just been beaten chases after the others have found their places, running around their teammates instead of through them, and a player crashing for a rebound goes around the bodies between them and the ball. Players end up inside each other less often than before.

What it costs

Possessions run a little longer than before, about two seconds. The pace of the game is checked against the real league and is next on the list, to be fixed from how quickly each player reads the floor, never by speeding the clock.