Quote:
Originally Posted by Camron Rust
... fancy pedometer. That number could change substantially with each game....lots of fast breaks vs. a lot of half-court action.
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Agree. However, it's not impossible to determine the actual mileage, but one must use another technique. Just breakdown a videotape of a game. We know various measured distances on the court, so it wouldn't be very difficult to determine how far an official actual moved. It will just take a lot of time, and patience, but it can be done. Anybody want to borrow my slide rule?
Regarding players, from various sources on the internet (below):
... nor did (John) Havlicek burn out as Cousy had predicted. The "man in motion," as he was dubbed in a book title, continued to run defenders into the ground. It was once estimated that he ran three to five miles per game.
There's an old wives' tale that the average NBA player will run five miles every game. Not quite. Many NBA teams have started using a system called SportVU, a specialized motion tracking system that enabling teams to get far more detailed stats about their players. In the 2012 season, the player that ran the farthest per game was Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls, who averaged 2.72 miles per game. That's no where near the five mile myth, but considering how much of that is sprinting, it's still very impressive.
Basketball: 2.9 miles
Cutting-edge tracking technology called SportVU has allowed coaches and statisticians to track NBA player performance in real time, including the distance traveled per game. This is another generous estimate, averaging SportVU’s distance traveled from the top ten hardwood pounders. Running the most during the 2014 season was Jimmy Butler of the Chicago Bulls at 3.1 miles per game.
According to data from STATS, a global leader in the gathering and dissemination of sports information, it is possible for a basketball player to average around 2.72 miles per game. This number depends how much play time a person gets during a game and what position an individual is playing.
STATS collects statistics on athletes in a variety of sports using their ground-breaking tracking system called SportVU. Blair O’Donovan, a top strength and conditioning coach who has worked with high school, college and professional athletes, once used a sports watch GPS to informally track high school players. His experiment led him to conclude that the young men he clocked ran anywhere from 4.02 to 5.7 miles in a single game. However, in light of SportVU’s more advanced, detailed motion tracking capabilities, distances in the neighborhood of five miles are today being classified as little more than old wives’ tales.
Just remember Abraham Lincoln's famous quote, "Don't believe everything that you read on the internet". Our sixteenth president was a pretty smart guy.