Below, we demonstrate why trying to identify a single player as the “Greatest of all time” is a fallacy.
Category: Basketball
Using mathematics to analyze who is a “better” player By: Dr. Ikjyot Singh Kohli It seems that nowadays one cannot escape the never-ending debate of “Who is better? Michael Jordan or Lebron James?” The situation is made worse by organizations like ESPN that have endless debates on their various shows combined with releasing lists of […]
Abstract: It is shown that the standard/common definition of team offensive rating/offensive efficiency implies that a team’s offensive rating increases as its opponent’s offensive rebounds increase, which, in principle, should not be the case. Over the past number of years, the advanced metric known as Offensive Rating has become the standard way of measuring a basketball […]
Here is an embedded dashboard that shows a number of statistical insights for NBA teams, their opponents, and individual players as well. You can compare multiple teams and players. Navigate through the different pages by clicking through the scrolling arrow below. (The data is based on the most recent season “per-game” numbers.) (If you cannot […]
As more and more teams are increasing the number of threes they attempt based on some misplaced logical fallacy that this somehow leads to an efficient offense, we show below that it is in fact in a team’s opponent’s interest for a team to attempt as many three point shots as possible. Looking at this […]
Based on a previous paper I wrote that used machine learning to determine the most relevant factors for teams making the NBA playoffs, I did some further analysis in an attempt to come up with an equation that outputs the probability of an NBA team making the playoffs in a given season. From the aforementioned […]
A very interesting result: computing payoffs of players, the following is a diagram that shows when it is optimal for a player to shoot a 2 point or a 3-point shot. One sees that it is hardly ever optimal for a player to shoot a 3-point shot, since the region corresponding to 3-point optimality is […]
By: Dr. Ikjyot Singh Kohli It seems that one cannot turn on ESPN or any YouTube channel nowadays without the ongoing debate of whether Michael Jordan is better than Lebron, what would happen if Michael Jordan played in today’s NBA, etc… However, I have not seen a single scientific approach to this question. Albeit, it […]
By: Dr. Ikjyot Singh Kohli The Golden State Warriors have posed quite the conundrum for opposing teams. They are quick, have a spectacular ability to move the ball, and play suffocating defense. Given their play in the playoffs thus far, all of these points have been exemplified even more to the point where it seems […]
By: Dr. Ikjyot Singh Kohli So, I came across this article today by Matt Moore on CBSSports, who basically once again has taken to the web to bash the Triangle Offense. Of course, much of what he claims (like much of the Knicks media) is flat-out wrong based on very primitive and simplistic analysis, and […]
Relativity Digest 