SlapBot; Ethics of Return-to-Play Protocols in the National Basketball Association

1. INTRODUCTION
In the high-stakes world of sports, where performance and health are constantly in tension, how do we decide when an athlete is truly ready to return? And how do we prepare them to return to peak performance? Our capstone project, SlapBot, is an automated robot that plays Slapjack, a card game where players place cards face-up into a single pile and compete to be the first to slap a Jack card when it appears on the pile. Through extending the ability to play this game from an automated version, individuals, including athletes, have the opportunity to conveniently practice their reflexes through the game when they don’t have a group together to play with. My STS research paper covers the ethics of return-to-play protocols in the National Basketball Association (NBA), where the conflict of priorities between winning and the health of players is quite prevalent. Oftentimes, the health of players becomes secondary, especially during the playoffs, which can become problematic to the future health and career projections of today’s players. As the world of professional sports continues to expand, with longer seasons and higher performance demands, the safe and effective recovery of athletes should be a top priority. The capstone project covers the technical aspects of athletic recovery, diving into potential tools that could be used to facilitate the return of athletes to peak performance, and the STS research paper covers current social issues surrounding athletic recovery, diving into the ethics of how soon athletes can recover safely enough in order to win for their team.

2. TECHNICAL RESEARCH
The main objective of the SlapBot is to provide an opportunity for individuals with a lack of reflexes, such as the elderly and physically impaired, to still participate in the game of Slapjack without facing any anxiety or discouragement of being able to maintain the traditional pace of the game. With the use of the SlapBot, these individuals are able to both feel included when playing the game in a group environment through using it as an aid and practice their reflexes on their own. Furthermore, any individual, regardless of disability, can still use the SlapBot to practice their reflexes. This is especially useful for athletes, where split-second decisions can make all the difference in a game. During gameplay, the SlapBot acts as another player that can detect cards and slap the card pile when a Jack is placed. Jack cards are detected using a Raspberry Pi camera. After a card is detected, a slapping algorithm is triggered through an STM32 microcontroller, enabling a robotic arm to slap the pile. In a group setting, the person who is using the SlapBot will act as a dealer while the SlapBot aids in slapping the pile for them when a Jack card is placed. In an individual setting, either another person or an automated card dealer can be used for card placement so the player can compete against the SlapBot.
For our project, our group created a self-assessment rubric rating the success of how well the SlapBot was implemented. The frequencies of image recognition and arm response were used as metrics. The rubric was rated on a letter grade scale where the highest grade, A, is fulfilled when the image recognition had at least a 75% success rate and the arm had a 100% response rate. Per our rubric, we can confidently say the image recognition algorithm we used had at least a 75% success rate, since there was never a time when a Jack card was misidentified, and it was a matter of placing the cards neatly enough for the camera to read. Furthermore, there was never a time that the arm did not respond when a Jack card was placed and identified. In the end, our final project met all the criteria in earning an A on the self-assessment rubric. One avenue of future improvement that was proposed for the project would be to expand SlapBot’s capabilities to play Egyption Rat Screw (ERS), a more complex variation of Slapjack that incorporates additional rules and a wider range of card combinations to slap, allowing for further gamification for the target audience and athletes to practice their reflexes on a more intense level.

3. STS RESEARCH
As the NBA is one of the most widely viewed professional sports leagues in the world and a centerpiece of sports culture for decades, the pressure is greater than ever for today’s players to keep that legacy going through more wins and championships. With the urgent need to return players back to the court as soon as possible after injuries, this begs the research question of my STS paper: what are the negative effects of today’s NBA return-to-play protocols on a player’s long-term health and career? Common basketball injuries, such as sprains and tears, can take weeks to months to recover from, leading to players having to take a significant amount of time off from the season to recover. With only five players on the court at a time, rosters having a maximum of fifteen players, and a high volume of games per season, injuries like these on starting players have the potential to prove catastrophic to a team’s record and playoff run. The main methodology used in the paper was a case study of specific NBA players who have gone through a decline in athletic performance as a result of injury aggravation which can be contributed from today’s RTP protocols. For each player, their average point production and percentage of games played per season was measured in the seasons before and after the aggravated injury. In hopes of finding a decline in both categories in the seasons after, it could show a correlation between a decline in their athleticism and the need to improve the morality of today’s RTP protocols. A literature review was also conducted to examine the efficacy of a proposed RTP protocol model in today’s NBA environment.
In my paper, four case studies were conducted on the following NBA players: James Harden, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, and Isaiah Thomas, all of whom have had careers spanning over a decade in the modern NBA. The results show that two of the players experienced a significant decline in both point productivity and number of games played per season after their injury aggravation and two of them didn’t. Specifically, Kevin Durant and James Harden were both able to successfully recover and return to their old selves after recovering from their injury. However, Derrick Rose and Isaiah Thomas both experienced a permanent decline in their athleticism and ultimately damaged their careers as a consequence of their franchise prioritizing winning. The proposed RTP protocol from the literature review shows that through using a structured approach to a smooth and safe recovery, there is a potential to reduce the number of aggravated injuries but only if franchises and coaches are willing to prioritize it. This study can serve as a precursor to the world outside of sports of how unpredictable one’s career can be from circumstances outside of one’s control, emphasizing the importance of being able to adapt and pivot in difficult ways.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering

Technical Advisor: Todd DeLong

STS Advisor: Pedro Augusto Pereira Francisco

Technical Team Members: Aimee Kang, Alex Beck, Michael Sekyi, Samantha Verdi