Some Michael Jordan Plus-Minus Numbers
This post contains a sample of Michael Jordan plus-minus numbers from video. It will be updated periodically.
1979 – 1980 NBA RAPM
From my video library of past games, I have been slowly reconstructing NBA Stint Data for several seasons prior to the 1996 Season’s start of the Play-By-Play era of statistics tracking of NBA games. This is a lengthy effort in trying to give some insight to interactions between players, at least from a stint level.…
Boston vs. The Field: Defensive 3PT%
An annual discussion that takes place roughly around the start of every NBA season is whether teams are “good” at perimeter defenders. This discussion arises due to spurious, early returns on defensive three point percentages. This year is no different as the Twitter feed becomes log-jammed with discussion about whether there is a “leave the…
Approximating Curves II: Assimilation of the Jump Shot Process
If you were to ask one-hundred shooting coaches “What’s the most important aspect to making a jump shot?” you will probably get at least fifty different responses. Answers may range from detailed such as the finger mechanics of the release or “shooting axis,” to broad, holistic responses such as “Find your repeatable comfort zone at…
Approximating Curves I: Mechanical Process
Now that the 2019-2020 season has ended, let’s take a quick look at something almost every data scientist knows: polynomial projection. Now, if you’re a data scientist and find yourself mumbling, “I’ve never heard of that,” don’t worry: You have. Over the next few posts, we are going to discuss a larger problem of approximating…
Analytic Breakdown: 1963 Finals Game 6
On April 24th, 1963, the Boston Celtics took the floor at the Los Angeles Sports Arena holding onto a 3-2 advantage in the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. For the only time in the history of the league, a Finals team trotted out only (later to be named) Hall of Fame players: Bob…
Extending Possessions: Geometric Distribution
In a recent post, we took a brief glimpse at offensive rebounding and discussed some pro’s and con’s about crashing for rebounds and provided an illustration about where rebounds go after missed attempts. In one such instance, you would have seen this plot: For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that every single red circle…
Offensive Crashing
Back in high school, it behooved our team to “keep one man back” on offense. The thought process was simple, if the defense were able to get out into transition, our team would at least impede their progress towards the basket with the hopes of them settling into the half-court offense. Sometimes it worked. In…
Story Underneath Usage: Incompleteness
In the era of possession-based statistics, we often look at items such as per-possession or per-100 possessions. This type of parsing makes sense as a possession is deemed to be the period of time a team “controls” the basketball. The technical definition of a possession defines the end of the “control” period as the point of…
Manifold Nonparametrics: Which Way Do Passers Pass?
As a player traverses across the court, they break down and process every event that they see: the assertion of defensive players, the alignment of their teammates, and current state of the game. The ability to perceive all three components simultaneously is what I call court vision. It is one of the primary instigators that…
Exercising Error: Quantifying Statistical Tests Under RAPM (Part IV)
In the Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) model, one of the perceived challenges is understanding the error associated with the resulting posterior RAPM value a player receives. In a previous post, we noted that RAPM is a Bayesian model in which we assume that “player contribution” can be estimated through weighted offensive ratings conditioned on the…
Squared Statistics: Understanding Basketball Analytics 