The Detroit Pistons, under the guidance of team president Stan Van Gundy, leaves no stone unturned. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the Pistons are the first NBA franchise to sign a deal with Kitman Labs, a sports technology firm specializing in wearable technology to provide enormous amounts of actionable, real-time data about athletes.

The partnership was announced via a Kitman Labs news release that read, in part:

The Kitman System will enable Pistons' coaches and trainers to receive actionable alerts that can help decrease injury risk and optimize athletic efficiency. With the additional ability to collect third party data like GPS trackers, heart-rate monitors and other wearables, the Pistons will deploy a comprehensive player care strategy that maximizes performance and player health. "We're collecting a large amount of data, and Kitman Labs gives us a great system to analyze athletic performance for each individual player during practices and athletic training sessions," said Jeff Bower, General Manager for the Detroit Pistons. "We're particularly excited by the system's ability to measure dynamic movement, and then quickly and accurately translate that data into actionable insights we can use to improve upon our ability to monitor player injury risk."

Why is this such a big deal? Because Detroit has made an $80 million investment in Reggie Jackson and will soon make a $120 million investment in Andre Drummond. Preventative measures, primarily through real-time data is viewed as the next major breakthrough in professional sport management.

As Kitman Labs CEO Stephen Smith said in a Wired UK piece in May about why athletes get injured, "The majority of these big superstars think it's down to pure bad luck," says Stephen Smith, CEO of Kitman Labs. "We're here to say that it's not."

The deal is part of a larger trend within the NBA, as detailed in this excellent Grantland piece by Zach Lowe, which detailed the NBA's desire to collect an abundance of information from wearable technology.