Interview With John Whitley: Why The President Of The NTBA Believes Pixellot Can Elevate Youth Basketball To New Heights

John Whitley is a basketball lifer. He first hit the hardwood in 3rd grade, playing through middle and high school. Then when he stepped back from competing, John quickly moved into coaching.

He worked at four different schools as a head varsity boys coach and spent two years coaching professionally. He won over 200 games during that time, including a career highlight of bringing home the 2005 North Carolina 2A State Championship at Kerr-Vance Academy.

It was during this time John felt that youth basketball in the USA needed a much more structured approach to competitions. Which is what led him to join the travel basketball world in 2006.

Not long after, John became president of the National Travel Basketball Association, which is the role he still holds today.

National Travel Basketball Association

The National Travel Basketball Association (NTBA) hosts basketball tournaments across the United States for boys and girls in the third-to-twelfth grades.

The NTBA is now in its tenth year, and John, for one, couldn’t be more excited about the future of American youth basketball. The association runs at least one tournament in thirteen states, culminating in a National Championship in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, each summer.

On average, 650 to 700 teams arrive at the championships, with boys and girls teams from 23 states (and several from afar afield as Puerto Rico and Canada).

In his quest to elevate youth basketball, John recently partnered with Pixellot to bring our AI-automated production technology to NTBA games. So we invited him to share why he believes Pixellot can help youth players and coaches in the travel basketball world.

The following article breaks down John’s thoughts, so get ready to learn what the future holds for our youth travel basketball teams.

Pixellot and the NTBA

At Pixellot, we’ve spent the last seven years building technology that works as well for elite clubs as it does for grassroots teams.

That’s because we recognize the crucial role that high-quality video plays in helping players at every level, which John appreciates too. As he put it, “Game film is so important for teams and, specifically, players to take their game to the next level.”

“As a coach, I can tell a player over and over, ‘you’re not in proper help-side position,’ and they might think they were until they see themself on film and understand what I’m saying; that’s why game-film is so important for players, for teams, to get better.’

In truth, this is what first led John to seek out video production technology. But he struggled to find a solution that a travel basketball team could afford. 

Most of the hardware had a price tag in the multiple thousands of dollars. And when coupled with the complexity of the systems, they just weren’t suitable for his NTBA teams. But when John discovered Pixellot, he knew he had found his answer.

“One thing I love about Pixellot is it’s so user-friendly. You just set the camera up, hit record, and let it do its thing. And it’s cost-effective, too, which is great. Because in the travel basketball world, teams don’t have much money to spend on something like this.”

And this one comment sums up what Pixellot aims to do.

Share content at the touch of a button

Pixellot’s mission is to make it easy and affordable to share content at the touch of a button, meaning coaches and parents don’t have to waste time setting up cameras or editing content.

In travel basketball, a solution like ours is especially valuable because teams can play anywhere from three to six games in a weekend, so it isn’t feasible for someone to record all the matches, let alone cut and clip the footage.

John himself has stories from his days as a full-time coach, when parents would send him DVDs of games, asking him to create highlight reels. He would spend hours editing the footage, but, as he freely admits, he wasn’t great at it, and the process took too long.

John was also quick to note how most travel team coaches also have a nine-to-five job, which leaves them with little time to piece together raw video footage. 

And that’s another reason John was happy to use Pixellot. “The setup’s so cool. When you watch the video back, it’s like watching a game on TV. The AI integration follows the ball, zooms in, zooms out, it’s really sharp.”

Therein lies a key feature of the software.

While Pixellot cameras capture a fixed video feed, artificial intelligence produces dynamic footage that looks just like a TV broadcast.

The camera spans the court and zooms in on crucial moments; it can even track when a steal leads to a breakout, as the AI knows to follow the ball instead of focusing on a cluster of players caught out in the wrong end-zone.​

The software can also identify made baskets, which is another feature John likes. 

“The condensed footage is so valuable. In travel basketball, coaches have a night or two a week of training with teams. They can’t spend an hour reviewing a game. But a five-minute breakdown gives them time to review, then practice.”

Optical character recognition (OCR) technology can even track player numbers and create highlight reels of made baskets on a player-by-player basis.

Which is crucial for aspiring pros who want to take their game to the top level.

In good company

With over 500,000 basketball games broadcast and more than 8,000 University and High School users, Pixellot technology is meant for everyone to use.  

From grassroots to elite clubs, and now the teams of the NTBA: Pixellot records your team’s game, enabling coaches to focus on coaching. They simply install the camera at mid-court.  Then, after the game, anyone can upload the content to the Pixellot platform.

The software handles the rest, auto-cutting the footage into highlights before sending a push notification to the whole team when the video is ready. 

And if parents want to create a showreel to post on social media, they’re free to edit the content in the mobile app or the desktop platform.

An affordable solution

At Pixellot, we’ve worked hard to create a product for every context, so whether you use the higher specification Pixellot Air or the more economical Pixellot Action, you always get a professional-quality video feed.

And while he loves the technology, the cost was a key driver in John’s decision to use Pixellot, as he said himself, ‘The technology isn’t just easy to use; it’s cost-effective.’