## So, What’s Wrong with the Knicks?

As I write this post, the Knicks are currently 12th in the Eastern conference with a record of 22-32. A plethora of people are offering the opinions on what is wrong with the Knicks, and of course, most of it being from ESPN and the New York media, most of it is incorrect/useless, here are some examples:

A while ago, I wrote this paper based on statistical learning that shows the common characteristics for NBA playoff teams. Basically, I obtained the following important result:

This classification tree shows along with arguments in the paper, that while the most important factor in teams making the playoffs tends to be the opponent number of assists per game, there are paths to the playoffs where teams are not necessarily strong in this area. Specifically, for the Knicks, as of today, we see that:

opp. Assists / game : 22.4 > 20. 75, STL / game: 7. 2 < 8.0061, TOV / game : 14.1 < 14.1585, DRB / game: 33.8 > 29.9024, opp. TOV / game: 13.0 < 13.1585.

So, one sees that what is keeping the Knicks out of the playoffs is specifically pressure defense, in that, they are not forcing enough turnovers per game. Ironically, they are very close to the threshold, but, it is not enough.

A probability density approximation of the Knicks’ Opp. TOV/G is as follows:

This PDF has the approximate functional form:

P(oTOV) =

Therefore, by computing:

$\int_{A}^{\infty} P(oTOV) d(oTOV)$,

=

,

where Erfc is the complementary error function, and is given by:

$erfc(z) = \frac{2}{\sqrt{\pi}} \int_{z}^{\infty} e^{-t^2} dt$

Given that the threshold for playoff-bound teams is more than 13.1585 opp. TOV/game, setting A = 13 above, we obtain: 0.435. This means that the Knicks have roughly a 43.5% chance of forcing more than 13 TOV in any single game. Similarly, setting A = 14, one obtains: 0.3177. This means that the Knicks have roughly a 31.77% chance of forcing more than 14 TOV in any single game, and so forth.

Therefore, one concludes that while the Knicks problems are defensive-oriented, it is specifically related to pressure defense and forcing turnovers.

By: Dr. Ikjyot Singh Kohli, About the Author

## Optimal Positions for NBA Players

I was thinking about how one can use the NBA’s new SportVU system to figure out optimal positions for players on the court. One of the interesting things about the SportVU system is that it tracks player $(x,y)$ coordinates on the court. Presumably, it also keeps track of whether or not a player located at $(x,y)$ makes a shot or misses it. Let us denote a player making a shot by $1$, and a player missing a shot by $0$. Then, one essentially will have data in the form $(x,y, \text{1/0})$.

One can then use a logistic regression to determine the probability that a player at position $(x,y)$ will make a shot:

$p(x,y) = \frac{\exp\left(\beta_0 + \beta_1 x + \beta_2 y\right)}{1 +\exp\left(\beta_0 + \beta_1 x + \beta_2 y\right)}$

The main idea is that the parameters $\beta_0, \beta_1, \beta_2$ uniquely characterize a given player’s probability of making a shot.

As a coaching staff from an offensive perspective, let us say we wish to position players as to say they have a very high probability of making a shot, let us say, for demonstration purposes 99%. This means we must solve the optimization problem:

$\frac{\exp\left(\beta_0 + \beta_1 x + \beta_2 y\right)}{1 +\exp\left(\beta_0 + \beta_1 x + \beta_2 y\right)} = 0.99$

$\text{s.t. } 0 \leq x \leq 28, \quad 0 \leq y \leq 47$

(The constraints are determined here by the x-y dimensions of a standard NBA court).

This has the following solutions:

$x = \frac{-1. \beta _0-1. \beta _2 y+4.59512}{\beta _1}, \quad \frac{-1. \beta _0-28. \beta _1+4.59512}{\beta _2} \leq y$

with the following conditions:

One can also have:

$x = \frac{-1. \beta _0-1. \beta _2 y+4.59512}{\beta _1}, \quad y \leq 47$

with the following conditions:

Another solution is:

$x = \frac{-1. \beta _0-1. \beta _2 y+4.59512}{\beta _1}$

with the following conditions:

The fourth possible solution is:

$x = \frac{-1. \beta _0-1. \beta _2 y+4.59512}{\beta _1}$

with the following conditions:

In practice, it should be noted, that it is typically unlikely to have a player that has a 99% probability of making a shot.

To put this example in more practical terms, I generated some random data (1000 points) for a player in terms of $(x,y)$ coordinates and whether he made a shot from that distance or not. The following scatter plot shows the result of this simulation:

In this plot, the red dots indicate a player has made a shot (a response of 1.0) from the $(x,y)$ coordinates given, while a purple dot indicates a player has missed a shot from the $(x,y)$ coordinates given (a response of 0.0).

Performing a logistic regression on this data, we obtain that $\beta_0 = 0, \beta_1 = 0.00066876, \beta_2 = -0.00210949$.

Using the equations above, we see that this player has a maximum probability of $58.7149 \%$ of making a shot from a location of $(x,y) = (0,23)$, and a minimum probability of $38.45 \%$ of making a shot from a location of $(x,y) = (28,0)$.

## What are the factors behind Golden State’s and Cleveland’s Wins in The NBA Finals

As I write this, Cleveland just won the series 4-3. What was behind each team’s wins and losses in this series?

First, Golden State: A correlation plot of their per game predictor variables versus the binary win/loss outcome is as follows:

The key information is in the last column of this matrix:

Evidently, the most important factors in GSW’s winning games were Assists, number of Field Goals made, Field Goal percentage, and steals. The most important factors in GSW losing games this series were number of three point attempts per game (Imagine that!), and number of personal fouls per game.

Now, Cleveland: A correlation plot of their per game predictor variables versus the binary win/loss outcome is as follows:

The key information is in the last column of this matrix:

Evidently, the most important factor in CLE’s wins was their number of defensive rebounds. Following behind this were number of three point shots made, and field goal percentage. There were some weak correlations between Cleveland’s losses and their number of offensive rebounds and turnovers.

Note that these results are essentially a summary analysis of previous blog postings which tracked individual games. For example, here , here and a first attempt here.

## Basketball Paper Update

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 image below.