How every rebound was won, and a stopped drive that depends on both players

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 three things visible that used to be decided out of sight, and fixes one that was decided the same way every time.

The race behind every rebound

A missed shot starts a race. Every player's time to the ball comes from how far away they are and how fast their own body can get there, less an arm's reach. Then the quickest player on each side races the other side's quickest, with a little of a scramble's chaos. Until now the replay only said who won.

Now, for a few seconds after a rebound, a card shows the race itself: who got the ball, how many seconds after the shot they got there, how fast the quickest player on the other side got there, and how likely each team was to win it. Sometimes the card reads like a sure thing. Sometimes the winner got there a fraction of a second after the other side and still came away with the ball: the times weigh the chances, they do not settle them, which is what makes a scramble a scramble.

How tightly a defender is guarding, right now

Every defender in the league has their own habit of guarding: some always stay tight to their player, some always sag off toward the basket. Click a defender while their team is defending and their card now says both halves of it: how far they are from the player they guard at that moment, and their own habit, how much looser or tighter than the usual spot they like to stand compared with the league's middle defender. Keep the card open through a possession and the distance moves with the play while the habit underneath stays their own.

A drive that gets cut off still depends on who is driving

When a defender slides across and cuts off a drive, the driver still gets somewhere first. How far should depend on two bodies: how quick the driver's first step is, and how long the defender needs to react, stop and slide across. Here it did not. Nearly four in five cut-off drives went exactly the same distance, about two feet, whoever was driving and whoever was guarding, because the defender's body always stood at one fixed arm's length and the driver ran into it.

Now the driver goes around the defender in their way, as far as their own first step carries them in the time the defender needs to cut them off. A quick driver against a slow-footed defender gets deeper than the other way round, and every cut-off drive is a small contest between two players instead of the same two feet.

Measured, not tuned: the shot clock

One more number, because it came out right on its own. We played 24 full games and counted how often a team let the shot clock run out: 32 times in 4,412 possessions, 0.73 per 100. The NBA's figure is 0.69. Nothing in the game is set to produce that number. It is what happens when every player decides for themselves when to shoot, pass or hold the ball.

Why it matters for watching

A rebound, a defender's spacing and a stopped drive are the small plays that decide most possessions, and each is now built from the players involved and shown in the replay. Pick any game on the front page, press play, and watch the card after the next missed shot.