Back in 2012, on the heels of my PhD in nonparametric Bayesian density estimation, I developed a methodology that constructs a nonparametric Bayesian density and teases out a nice spatio-temporal decomposition of movement on a space of interest. Pointing this at NBA SportVu data, the decomposition kindly identified player tendency in specific types of offenses…
Here is an update on how safe an NBA lead is for the 2016-17 NBA Season. Last season, we found that the Bill James’ bound was violated twice in the 2015-16 NBA season. This year, the bound was violated one time: January 4th, 2017 by the Miami Heat against the Sacramento Kings. The same Sacramento…
A possession is defined by the NBA as Section XVIII-Team Possession A team is in possession when a player is holding, dribbling or passing the ball. Team possession ends when the defensive team gains possession or there is a field goal attempt. There is a little change to that definition even, as a field goal…
Over the past couple decades, we have heard effectively the same complaint that the NBA’s Western Conference is simply too tough and that the Eastern Conference teams have it relatively easy. During the last decade, it’s the primary reason that people dismiss LeBron James’ run through seven consecutive NBA finals as a result of the…
“The New York Knicks, with their first pick, select Patrick Ewing of Georgetown,” called out David Stern in the 1985 NBA draft. A draft that has since been heavily debated for three-plus decades as being the epitome of the NBA draft being “rigged” or fixed. Discussion about bent corners of envelopes, all the way to…
In a previous post, we took a look into some spatio-temporal data obtained through SportVU technology for the NBA and identified how to use that data to perform basic tasks such as building convex hulls to illustrate offense and defense coverage on a court; as well as provide basic Python code for the reader to…
On August 29, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year old black male, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a 28-year old white male police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri, after an altercation stemming from a pedestrian stop relative to a recent robbery in the vicinity. The shooting, mixed with contradictory testimony from several onlookers, ignited civil unrest with focus…
Recently, Forbes posted America’s Most Dangerous Cities of 2015 which attempted to rank the most violent cities with populations over 200,000 persons. Despite urgings by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to refrain from making violent crime rankings, several groups such as the former Morgan Quitno and, presently, Forbes continue to put forth rankings. In this…
Squared Statistics: Understanding Basketball Analytics 