Tristan Thompson’s AI tool puts NBA fans in the front office originally appeared on TheStreet.
NBA champion and ESPN analyst Tristan Thompson is betting big on AI—and he’s starting with basketball. In a recent episode of TheStreet Roundtable, Thompson unveiled TracyAI, a new AI-powered platform aimed at democratizing the kind of elite analytics typically reserved for NBA front offices.
Thompson compares traditional analytics to ingredients in a recipe: “Analytics is just numbers, right? It's like making a lasagna, right? Analytics is just the beef, but you gotta get the pasta, you gotta get the stew, you gotta get the sauce.” His goal with Tracy is to bring all those layers together, transforming raw data into meaningful insights.
While many fans rely on basic stats from ESPN or NBA.com, Thompson wants to offer the same high-level analytics used by NBA franchises. “Every NBA team has (access to) high level analytics that you have to be an official professional team to have,” he explained. “But I was able to pull these APIs and put it into an AI agent.”
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While sports have lagged behind sectors like retail, music, and hiring in AI adoption, Thompson says live sports—particularly the NBA—are ripe for transformation. “When guys are talking about, you know, who's the best player or who's the best player in the fourth quarter, most people just go off a field goal percentage in the fourth quarter,” he explained.
The data NBA teams have access to go much deeper than overall shooting percentage though, “When Anthony Edwards goes left, he finishes at the rim, he finishes 65% of the time. When Anthony Edwards is driving right, he finishes about 40% of the time,” Thompson said.
For Thompson, it’s about changing how people watch the game. “Having those analytics and that information can change a whole perspective of how you view the game,” he noted. With Tracy, fans might soon see basketball with a front office lens.
Tristan Thompson’s AI tool puts NBA fans in the front office first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 10, 2025
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 10, 2025, where it first appeared.
