For those of you wanting to dive deeper into the data, try basketball-reference.com's PlayIndex+: http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/shooting...
Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#42Not sure how many of you are basketball fans, but if you have even a cursory interest in the sport I suggest you check out this year's NBA finals. It is widely regarded as one of the most anticipated match-ups in many years. OKC's stars are all under the age of 24 which means they should dominate for years to come. We have literally watched these guys grow up before our eyes and they finally get their shot at the tit…
> The Heat are the most hated team in the league. I'd say Heat and Thunder are tied for most hated team.
Wholeheartedly disagree.
The Lakers may be up there with the Heat for most hated team, but I think OKC is very well liked (outside of Seattle).
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#43Shane Battier is one of the smartest players in the NBA, and you can see it in action by looking at his shot chart.
There's a massive (old) article on Battier - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?...
Apparently, he's such a good team player (picking good positions, herding opponents into weak positions, doing things which are bad for his stats but good for the team) that he can almost shut down Kobe. OK, Kobe still scores a lot when he's guarded by Battier, but only because Kobe always gets the ball.
He'll memorize every one of those heat maps (along with every other dataset his coach can get him), and use that knowledge to mess up his opponent's attacks.
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#44Not sure how many of you are basketball fans, but if you have even a cursory interest in the sport I suggest you check out this year's NBA finals. It is widely regarded as one of the most anticipated match-ups in many years. OKC's stars are all under the age of 24 which means they should dominate for years to come. We have literally watched these guys grow up before our eyes and they finally get their shot at the tit…
It's even got a bit of "who's the real villain", due to the manner in which the Sonics/Thunder left Seattle. While those who weren't Sonics fans tend to enjoy the way the Thunder play and the humility of KD, a lot of Sonics fans who watched the Clay Bennett saga and read the leaked e-mails are quite bitter. It was similar in heart-wrenching status in Seattle to "The Decision" in Cleveland.
Something tells me that the bitterness from Sonics fans will be around for a while.
When the Thunder advanced to the finals, a Washington-state newspaper ran the headline "Sonics advance to Finals, oh wait // Oklahoma City steals team, and steals game from San Antonio": http://deadspin.com/5916713/pacific-northwest-newspaper-head...
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it work?
Short version: Using a number(six) of dedicated video cameras around the venue and (a lot of) image processing. There is a nice article in wired about it(include a picture of one of the cameras and the view from another) http://www.wired.com/playbook/2011/04/nba-data-revolution/al...
How is the system calibrated? Are the cameras at fixed angles or mounted to a base that measures their angles?
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#46As best I can tell it does not include free throw attempts. If that is correct, the data and therefore the visualization is seriously incomplete and misleading.
A player's free throw ability does not need any real visualization. It comes down to number of attempts, and percentage made. Adding them would skew these visualizations and wouldn't tell you anything you couldn't easily figure out by looking at a player's stats.
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#47As best I can tell it does not include free throw attempts. If that is correct, the data and therefore the visualization is seriously incomplete and misleading.
A player's free throw ability does not need any real visualization. It comes down to number of attempts, and percentage made. Adding them would skew these visualizations and wouldn't tell you anything you couldn't easily figure out by looking at a player's stats.
Hhmm. I was assuming the purpose of such a visualization was to understand the offense, which can't be done without including free throws. Perhaps it serves some other purpose, like employing "front-end developers".
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#48Do yourself a favor before watching the NBA finals -- check out this 5 minutes preview of the finals: http://www.bballbreakdown.com/2012-nba-finals-preview-heat-v...
Best analysis I've seen yet.
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Short version: Using a number(six) of dedicated video cameras around the venue and (a lot of) image processing. There is a nice article in wired about it(include a picture of one of the cameras and the view from another) http://www.wired.com/playbook/2011/04/nba-data-revolution/al...
How is the system calibrated? Are the cameras at fixed angles or mounted to a base that measures their angles?
The angles are important, but also the position relatively to the court(which is different in every venue).
The calibration is done by matching(automatically or manually) known world points to pixels from the cameras. (This is a very common practice in image-processing systems)
Re: Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
#50Is there a publicly available data source for basketball stats like this? Curious where these datasets come from...
No publicly available that I've seen. Most companies use STATS inc