THE STORY OF the night ended up being the arrest of New York Knicks legend Charles Oakley, after a squabble with Madison Square Garden security. But for NBA commissioner Adam Silver, the Feb. 6 game between the Los Angeles Clippers and Knicks featured one other little issue, quietly hiding on the wrist of the Clippers' starting center.
As the game tipped off, DeAndre Jordan rose high to slap the ball away from Knicks star Kristaps Porzingis. Jordan did so with a black sweatband covering his right wrist. The thing is, Jordan doesn't historically wear wristbands. But he did in this game, he tells ESPN, to hide a little biometric computer he has taken to wearing strapped to his wrist.
The WHOOP is a biometric device like many others -- think Fitbit or Garmin. This one tracks heart rate, skin temperature and other metrics. What has Jordan learned from the collected data? It has helped him with his sleeping habits, his recovery from travel, what to eat and what not to eat. Simply put, he has learned "what I need to do and what I don't need to do."
"It's pretty good," Jordan told ESPN.com two days after the Knicks game. And it's the future -- the brave new world of big data is coming to the NBA, and every sport, thanks to an influx of new technologies like this, promising to reduce injuries and improve performance. Jordan is among the first of many.
Some other NBA players wear them off the court but not in games because they don't want to get in trouble. Sources say Jordan is not the only player to hide one under a sweatband this season. The question is how quickly the league can keep up because, for the moment, it's not clear that, under NBA rules, Jordan's WHOOP is allowed at all.