Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
toddwschneider.com
Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
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Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#2More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how dumb the Pacers are.
Also, FWIW, Sportradar tracks location with an iPad application that they either use in-arena via a trained scorer or inside of their HQ in Minnesota.
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#3More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how dumb the Pacers are. Also, FWIW, Sportradar tracks location with an iPad application that they either use in-arena via a trained scorer or inside of their HQ in Minnesota.
I can't wait to see how Houston's style holds up in the playoffs -- defenses will be less forgiving and 3 point shots are high variance. Their offensive rating took a clear dip in the playoffs last year and I suspect the same could happen this year, which would suggest their offensive style is not ideal.
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#4I wrote a similar post on the same large NCAA dataset, focusing more on positional heat map data visualizations: http://minimaxir.com/2018/03/basketball-shots/
There's a lot of interesting conclusions that can be found from play-by-play time series data (the NCAA dataset also on BigQuery has data since 2009). Here's a quick new visualization of the Distribution of Basketball Home Team Points at Each Minute of NCAA Games, by Season: https://i.imgur.com/8Ar0J2W.png
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#5Great stuff. Well explained.
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#6More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how dumb the Pacers are. Also, FWIW, Sportradar tracks location with an iPad application that they either use in-arena via a trained scorer or inside of their HQ in Minnesota.
At first I was going to comment on how this is probably just teams playing to their strengths e.g. If Harden played for Indiana, their heat map would probably look different. But then I looked at the stats and Indiana's 3Pt% is slightly higher than Houston's, so you're right! Oladipo needs to jack more 3's.
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#7More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how dumb the Pacers are. Also, FWIW, Sportradar tracks location with an iPad application that they either use in-arena via a trained scorer or inside of their HQ in Minnesota.
I can't wait to see how Houston's style holds up in the playoffs -- defenses will be less forgiving and 3 point shots are high variance. Their offensive rating took a clear dip in the playoffs last year and I suspect the same could happen this year, which would suggest their offensive style is not ideal.
Probably just like the old Mike D'Antoni teams. It's interesting to see how much his 7 seconds offense changed basketball.
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#8More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how dumb the Pacers are. Also, FWIW, Sportradar tracks location with an iPad application that they either use in-arena via a trained scorer or inside of their HQ in Minnesota.
I can't wait to see how Houston's style holds up in the playoffs -- defenses will be less forgiving and 3 point shots are high variance. Their offensive rating took a clear dip in the playoffs last year and I suspect the same could happen this year, which would suggest their offensive style is not ideal.
> 3 point shots are high variance
Is there any research into whether this is true? This 538 article suggests it’s overblown.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/live-by-the-three-die-b...
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#9As a basketball fan, I love this kind of analysis. As mentioned in the article, I think the defensive skill of NBA players is a big reason for the differences in accuracy within six feet. For many NBA players, it's much easier to take a 7-12 foot shot than to challenge the taller/stronger players that defend closer to the rim. On average, the "rim defenders" in college aren't as strong, making it easier to score on dunks and lay-ups.
Re: Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball
#10More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how dumb the Pacers are. Also, FWIW, Sportradar tracks location with an iPad application that they either use in-arena via a trained scorer or inside of their HQ in Minnesota.
I think the Pacers are just pursuing a contrarian strategy that works for them. All things being equal, threes are more efficient than midrange shots, which is why teams like Houston almost never take midrange shots. But wide-open midrange shots are more valuable than contested threes, and as more and more NBA defenses give up the open midrange shot in exchange for taking away threes and layups, it makes more and more sense to take those shots, only shooting enough threes to keep the defense honest.