Stanford Magazine - Noah's Arc

May/June 2013 - Stanford Magazine

Silicon Valley is famous for inventions that began in somebody’s garage, but here’s one that began in a driveway. Two years ago, friends and churchmates Alan Marty and Ridge McGhee met at Marty’s house for their regular pickup basketball game. Each had been looking for a way to help his daughter improve her shooting and was convinced that the proper arc of a shot was key. Both men had rigged homemade practice aids—Marty’s involved a rake on a ladder—to get their daughters to shoot the ball at the proper height. Discussion led to collaboration, which led to a product that may revolutionize how shooting is taught.

It’s called Noah, and its marketing tagline elegantly describes its function: “building the perfect arc.” Using a video camera and machine vision technology that allows computers to “see,” Noah documents the trajectory of a basketball shot and tells the shooter how he or she is doing. In the product’s online demonstration, a player shoots a series of free throws. After each shot, Noah—a 5-foot-tall device that looks like a cross between a computer and a sneaker—verbally spits out the angle of the arc: “45.8,” “48.2.” According to Marty, a player using Noah in practice can develop the proper muscle memory to replicate the optimal arc, between 42 and 48 degrees.

Marty, MA ’84, MBA ’84, and McGhee, who specializes in machine vision technology, also recruited Tom Edwards, ’83, PhD ’88, a rocket scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, for the project. After developing a prototype, they tested it at local high schools and with the Stanford men’s basketball team. Players who trained with Noah increased their shooting percentage about 7 percent.

The Dallas Mavericks began using Noah last fall, with encouraging results. They led the NBA in free-throw percentage (80.6) as of April 8, and the team’s shooting coach, Gary Boren, has endorsed the product.