BLUE Defense: Introduction and Analysis

One of the simplest offensive plays in basketball is the pick and roll. The philosophy is relatively straightforward, a ball handler waits to receive a screen from a teammate and reacts accordingly. If the teammate establishes position, gets low and wide, and makes proper contact with the ball handler’s defender, then the defense is forced…

Analyzing Steals in the 2016-17 NBA Season

Over the 2016-17 NBA regular season there were a total of 18950 steals. This amounted to roughly 15.4 steals per game; effectively 7.7 steals per team per game. Over the 236,547 possessions in the NBA last season, this amounted to 8.0111% of all possessions ending in a steal. Think about that for a second. Roughly…

Markov Simulation: NBA Playoffs

With the NBA Playoffs set to get underway, we take a quick look at the probabilities for each team becoming the NBA Champions. Common consensus would place any combination of the five strongest teams: Golden State – Houston – San Antonio versus Cleveland – Boston. But the question is how likely? To answer that, we…

NBA Tracking Using Python: Warriors vs. Grizzlies

With the Golden State Warriors and Memphis Grizzlies are set to square off for the second time this season tonight, we take an extended look at the most recent 119 – 69 Warrior win over the Grizzlies on November 2nd. We do this by looking at two consecutive possessions that resulted in a Warriors basket and a…