Over the past decade a true emphasis on three point shooting has emerged. This can be credited to the understanding of effective field goal percentage being a better underlying parameter for points per field goal attempt than raw field goal percentage. And it’s become an emphasis for some top-tier teams such as the Houston Rockets.…
A tried-but-true strategy in pick-up (and grade school) basketball is the “dump-and-chase” offense. This offense takes as many jumpers as possible, regardless of capability, fully knowing that the team can either out-hustle their opponent for rebounds; or they have a behemoth of a rebounder on their team. As players become older, or more technically sound…
This post is long overdue, and you may completely disagree with everything I am about to lay out; but hear me out: Here’s a way to beat up tanking, redistribute the lottery system for the NBA Draft, and make the playoffs a little more intense. When the new probability structure came out for the NBA…
A problem that was posed in Dean Oliver’s Basketball on Paper (2003) revolved around the way one can credit assists. In his book, Oliver laments the lack of data available for crediting assists and he begrudgingly uses the one-half rule: credit both the scorer and the assist man with one-half of the assist. However, in…
When we learn about computational mathematics, software engineering, or data science in general, one of the most important questions we have to answer is how many operations are required. The answer isn’t to show the prowess of our algorithm, but rather identify how quickly the algorithm can perform. We need to know if the answer…
The usage of an NBA player consists of the number of chances a player takes out of the possible chances a team has when that player is on the court. A chance being the number of possessions that can result in a scoring possession. The higher the usage for a particular player, the more likely…
As of the morning of November 19th, 2017, the Minnesota Timberwolves have found themselves at 10-5, atop the Northwest Division and third on the Western Conference behind the Golden State Warriors (12-4) and the Houston Rockets (13-4). In a recent match-up, the Timberwolves dispatched the San Antonio Spurs 98 – 86 in Minnesota. With the…
