NBA App Adds Game Pulse, Ai-Based Chat Feature to Keep Fans Tuned In

The NBA is putting on a full-court press when it comes to digital offerings this year, and that includes some great new features on the NBA App as well as a new AskNBA AI chat feature that is set to give fans the ultimate deep dive tool for all things NBA. Sara Zuckert, Head of NBA App says the goal is to have the NBA app serve as a hub for their daily needs, whether that's news, content, insights, or of course the live game.

Our goal is to make every live moment easier to discover, follow, and watch in real time, she says. This year the app will feature more robust live coverage of the game than ever before. We'll start pregame with free live-streaming warm-ups available in the app from around the league.

One of the cool additions to the App is Game Pulse which Jay Lee, NBA, head of app experience, says is a brand-new companion experience. Game Pulse combines a live court visualization with highlights, player and team milestones and advanced statistics, including shot charts and quarter-by-quarter player stats, in a live-updating experience. Fans can follow live or catch up quickly with contextual insights on momentum-shifting plays and individual performances.

Game Pulse combines a live court visualization with highlights, player and team milestones and advanced statistics. It's a real-time feed that combines possessions, alerts, advanced stats, insight, and highlights all in one place to tell the story of every live game, he explains. We believe our fans want to go beyond just what happened. They want to know why it matters.

NBA Senior Lead Product Manager, Media & Gaming, Michael Callahan, says that internally the NBA app team sometimes calls it an additional color commentator.

Oftentimes the color commentator will say something, and I'll go to Wikipedia or Google to look that up. How can we answer those questions proactively for the fan and anticipate what they might want to see? he says. Once the user opens Game Pulse, you'll see the catch-up summary published as the first post. This is an AI-generated catch-up summary. What we're trying to do is key the user in on what they need to watch for, not just who's winning or who's having a good game, but what matchups we should look out for.

And then there are the deeper opportunities like next-level insights and also advanced metrics.

There was an insight we saw the other night in testing that identified that the Thunder were doing a lot of in-and-out from the post, that their big man was a good passer, says Callahan. I hadn't known that before, but it helped me watch the game and look for certain moments.

With respect to the technical workflow, Game Pulse begins with what Callahan calls the spine which is the player tracking data and box score data.

Then WSC Sports is the video mechanism to identify the key plays and publish them, says Callahan. Our engineering team then maps them together based on timecode. We know what data we have in the building and how good a fan experience we can create, so it is really about taking different pieces we know exist and putting them in one place.

And AI is also playing a big part this season as the league will combine tracking data with AI to provide fans with robust statistical insights around previously unmeasurable aspects of the game in real time via NBA Inside the Game powered by AWS. It includes new advanced stats such as Handle Score, which captures the style and effectiveness of every dribble move, and a new zone defense model showing how often and successful teams are at using it. NBA Blueprint will deliver AI-generated pregame and postgame reports for every game, giving fans a quick read on each matchup's biggest statistical advantages and storylines, with insights also appearing within Game Pulse.

NBA Vice President, Stats Technology Product Development Charlie Rohlf says some fans may not love charts and tables and that is why Blueprint is different.

One thing we really like about Blueprint is it has utility and value no matter how much time or interest a fan has. If you just have a moment, you can see which team has more green shots that were easy or red shots that were hard. If you're so inclined, you can click any individual shot and see, down to the inch, how close the defender's hand was.

Another new feature? AskNBA, an AI-powered basketball assistant that uses new in-game advanced stats and analysis to let fans dive deeper into the game through questions about games, players, statistics and on-court trends, backed by official NBA data.

Sydney Sichek, Lead of AI Function, Direct-to-Consumer, says the league has decades of data and stats and with AI that treasure trove can be accessed by fans.

We see fans asking for hypothetical rosters, some asking for trivia to play back and forth with their friends, and others asking stat questions like what's the worst plus-minus in a game, how players do on the second night of back-to-backs, even things like most games with 23 points, five rebounds, four assists, she says. Fans are just really excited to pull up these random stats and nuggets.

Sichek says a variety of LLMs were used in the creation of AskNBA and the league can also swap models in and out.

Got a question about all things NBA past and present? AskNBA is set to meet your needs. We give the underlying LLMs access to our tools and try to tell them how to plan for something, she explains. We're balancing accuracy and speed, because we want to be as accurate as possible without taking multiple minutes.

And video highlights are on the way for AskNBA.

That's an exciting thing that we're working on, that we've gotten a lot of positive feedback on, and we've been able to see in our limited beta different patterns of what would be interesting, adds Sichek.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/10/20/nba-app-adds-game-pulse-ai-base...
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