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Basketball Chicago Bulls Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs Science Sports Statistics

The “Evolution” of the 3-Point Shot in The NBA

The purpose of this post is to determine whether basketball teams who choose to employ an offensive strategy that involves predominantly shooting three point shots is stable and optimal. We employ a game-theoretical approach using techniques from dynamical systems theory to show that taking more three point shots to a point where an offensive strategy […]

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Basketball Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics NBA NBA Finals NBA Playoffs Sports Statistics

Some Thoughts On Howard Beck’s Bleacher Report Article

Howard Beck had an interesting article today on Bleacher Report, basically suggesting that the NBA finals, in particular, the current style of play embodied by The Golden State Warriors is somehow a vindication of D’Antoni’s basketball philosophies: “Shoot a lot of threes”, “Shoot in 7 seconds or less”, “Play small lineups”, etc… While the Warriors have […]

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Basketball Data Analytics Data Science Mathematics Sports Statistics

An Analysis of The 2015 NBA Finals Matchup

The NBA finals are exactly five days away, and I wanted to present an analysis breaking down the matchup between The Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers. I used machine and statistical learning techniques to generate the most probable scenarios for the outcome of each game, and this is what I found. Note that the probabilities […]

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Basketball Data Analytics Data Science

Three-Point Shooting Teams and The 2014-2015 NBA Playoffs

Major Update: June 22, 2015.  I have now published a formal article on the arXiv proving many of the assertions made earlier in this blog post. It can be found here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.06687 Some controversy was stirred up today when Knicks President and Basketball coaching legend Phil Jackson made the following tweets regarding three-point shooting teams […]

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Basketball Chicago Bulls Mathematics Science Sports Statistics

Data Analytics and The 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls

It is without question that the greatest team in NBA history was the 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls. They went 72-10 that year and went on to win the NBA Championship against a top-notch Seattle Supersonics team.   Phil Jackson’s system and first-class coaching were the major reasons why the Bulls were so good, but I wanted […]

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Basketball Mathematics Science Sports Statistics

Data Analytics and The Raptors 2015 Loss

          Based on several internal statistical models that my colleagues and I developed, we all have concluded that the Raptors losing the way they did in the first round was somewhat of a statistical anomaly. Through an extensive analysis, I present evidence below that shows it was due to several coaching […]