New York, New York - Using artificial intelligence, a top basketball team found the right defensive strategy that made the difference in winning the NBA championship.

It's not a scene out of the future, but a reality on the hard courts of today.

Data specialist Rajiv Maheswaran declines to name the outfit that leveraged AI analysis to victory, saying in a corporate video only that it happened several years ago.

That was "the moment that sealed it," added the co-founder of tech startup Second Spectrum, which provides the league with swathes of player positioning data gathered during crucial games.

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Analytics have transformed the NBA over the past decade, with AI and other breakthroughs still ramping up.

Embryonic in the early 2000s, the revolution truly took hold with motion-capture cameras installed in every venue in 2013.

Ten years later, new tech upgraded renderings of the court from 2D to 3D, unlocking even more precious data.

Each player wears 29 markers "so you know not just where they are, but you know where their elbow is, and you know where their knee is," said Ben Alamar, a sports analytics writer and consultant.

"You're actually able to see, yes, that was a high quality [defensive] closeout," said Tom Ryan, head of Basketball Research and Development at the NBA, describing an often-used maneuver. "It's adding more context to that metric."

"Now all 30 teams are doing significant analysis with varying levels of success," said Alamar.

Houston, Golden State, and Oklahoma City were often cited among early adopters at the turn of the 2010s.

This season, Oklahoma City is on top of regular season standings, "and they play different," said ESPN Analytics Group founder Dean Oliver.

"They force turnovers, and they have very few turnovers themselves. So there are definitely advantages to be gained."

"It's not going to turn a 25-win team into a 70-win team during the season, but it can turn a 50-win team into a 55, 56-win team," according to Alamar.

AI allows for "strategic insights" like "understanding matchups, finding the situations where players perform well, what combinations of players," he added.