Who owns the floor: the basketball replay now maps which team would win a loose ball at every spot

2026-10-02 14:44 UTC

Basketball is a game of space as much as of the ball. Press M in the replay, or the Space button, and the floor takes on the two teams' colours: each spot is tinted by the team that would get to a loose ball there first, more strongly where one side would win it easily and fading to neutral where it is a coin flip.

The court from overhead with the space map on: around the right-hand basket the floor is tinted red where the red players stand nearest, a band of blue runs between the two groups and out to the corner, and the far half of the court is tinted only faintly — A missed shot in the air: the red players own the floor around the basket, with a seam of blue between them.

The race the game already runs

Every rebound in the league is decided by a race. Each player's time to reach the ball comes from how far away they are and how fast their own body can get there, less an arm's reach. The quickest player on each side is that side's runner, and the two runners race, with a little of the chaos of a real scramble in the result. The space map asks that same race the same question at every point of the floor at once, instead of only where the ball comes down. A test holds the page's answer to the simulation's own, to within a billionth.

What it shows

The race is run again for every moment from where each player is then, so the colours move with the players as a possession plays out. Paused, the map is a picture of that instant: which parts of the floor each team would win, and where the two are close enough that it could go either way.