Room to move in the paint: defenders run around players, and the replay names the cutter

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 is about the paint, the crowded space under the basket, and about reading what happens there.

Around each other, not through each other

Ten bodies share a small floor, and when a drive gets past its defender, everyone moves at once. Defenders used to plan their paths around only some of the players moving with them, so an attacker and a defender could pass straight through each other on their way to the same spot. Now a defender plans their run around every attacker on the floor, standing or running, and bends round them the way a real player would. Moments where an attacker and a defender overlapped fell by about a quarter. It did not change how the games come out: over 48 test games the pace, the scoring and the shooting stayed where they were. The plays look the way they were decided.

Who cut, and how open they were

When a drive beats its defender, the players without the ball do not stand still. Some cut to the basket, hoping for a pass. The card for a beaten drive now names each one and says where they started and how much room they had: "cut to the basket from 7.64 m out, the nearest defender 1.42 m off their line". A cutter with a defender a step away is a target. One with a defender in the way is not, and now you can see which was which.

One card at a time

A card that disappears before you finish reading it is no help. When two plays come close together, the beaten drive's card now gives way if another card is due within two and a half seconds, so the one you see stays up long enough to read. Fast sequences show fewer, steadier cards, and the game still has an explanation on screen about half the time.

A steadier camera

The camera that follows the ball eases after the play. On a sudden block it could swing across the court in a single frame. Now it turns no faster than a set rate, a smooth sweep instead of a jump, and it still gets out from behind a player as quickly as before.