Yesterday for the first time, I took the playoff game between Cleveland and Toronto as an opportunity to test out a script I wrote in R that keeps track of key statistics during a game in real time (well, every 30 seconds). Based on previous work, it is evident that championship-calibre teams are the ones […]
Category: Data Science
I’ve been ranting a lot about the so-called “value” of the three-point shot in “modern-day” basketball. I know! But, here is yet one more entry. The common consensus is that teams are shooting more three point shots as discussed in the articles below: http://www.businessinsider.com/nba-three-point-shooting-2016-3 http://www.nba.com/2014/news/features/john_schuhmann/11/07/history-of-the-three-point-shot/ http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/03/08/three-pointers-and-skill-displacement/ There are several more where these have come from. […]
A few weeks ago, I published a paper that used data science / machine learning to detect commonalities between NBA playoff teams. I have now updated and extended it to detect commonalities between NBA championship teams using artificial neural networks, which is a field of deep learning. The paper can be accessed by clicking on the […]
A new and formal paper of mine describing how one can use machine learn methodologies to help determine which NBA teams will make the playoffs is now online: arXiv link SSRN link Have a look!
It is another New York Knicks season where fans have to wait until next year to see if the Knicks will make the playoffs or not. Yesterday, there was a lot buzz around the idea that Phil Jackson may want to keep Kurt Rambis on as head coach, and as usual, there were numerous people […]
As a long-time Golden State Warriors fan (go Tim Hardaway and Chris Mullin!), I have been watching the Warriors this season with great interest. Stephen Curry has been getting a lot of attention. It is somewhat of a foregone conclusion that he will be the MVP this season, but, I am not completely convinced, in […]
As usual, Phil Jackson made another interesting tweet today: Never seen anything like SCurry? Remind you of Chris Jackson/ Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who had a short but brilliant run in NBA? — Phil Jackson (@PhilJackson11) February 28, 2016 And, as usual received many criticisms from “Experts”, who just looked at the raw numbers from each players, and […]
A big part of my research involves dynamical systems theory. A lot of people don’t know what this is, at least, they don’t have a very good idea. It has not helped that the vast majority of Canadian university physics programs have deemphasized classical mechanics and differential equations, but that is an another story! Anyways, […]
I’ve been interested for some time on figuring out an analytical way to determine what characterizes an NBA team as a playoff team. Looking at the previous six seasons, I pulled together almost 65 different statistics that characterize how a team plays, and then performed a classification tree analysis. I found the following result: […]
The vast majority of NBA analysts claim today that the NBA has changed. It has become more fast-paced, and there is a significantly greater emphasis on teams attempting more three point shots. The evidence for this is the repeated recital of the fact that over the last number of years, the average three-point attempt rate […]
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