The stream hears the game, and a driver decides at the gather

Two changes went live together: the stream can now be heard as well as watched, and a driver who gets past their defender now makes their choice a step earlier, as real players do.

Sounds from what happened

The live stream now plays the game's own sounds. A bounce is heard at the instant the drawn ball touches the floor, whoever is dribbling. A made shot swishes when the ball reaches the rim, a miss hits the rim, and a blocked shot makes its sound at the release, where the hand met the ball. A shot that was stripped before it went up makes no shot sound.

None of them are background loops standing in for play. Each comes from something the simulation recorded or the replay drew, at the moment it happened. Each is kept no louder than half of full volume, so it does not distort when it lands on a commentator's loudest word. The sounds themselves are simple tones for now. The sounds play only on the stream; the replay on the site stays silent.

Deciding at the gather

When a drive beats its defender, the driver used to run all the way to the rim and only then decide what to do, by which time the help had usually arrived. Now the decision comes at the gather, the moment the driver picks up the ball to go up, up to about a second earlier. From there they can shoot at the end of their run, pass while the lanes are still open, or keep going and decide again at the rim.

The shot is then taken from where the run ends, and the replay draws it there: the run on to the finish, the release at the finish, or the pass from the gather.

The defenders at the finish changed too. The defender who was beaten, and a helper who comes over, now stand at a guarding distance instead of right on the driver's hip, so layups at the end of a drive go in about as often as real ones do. With the decision coming earlier, though, the league passes out of drives for threes more often than real teams do.