JUSTIN TRAN
Basketball is a beautiful sport, and one where anyone can be included and participate in. The excitement comes from the storylines, fierce competition, and the level of chess a NBA player makes in scoring a basket, anticipating an opposing player’s move, neutralizing the best player from having a high efficiency night, and more.
Check out the following Tableau slides below
I analyzed 20 NBA teams of two datasets and relevant statistics. The following are two tables and a graph of the NBA teams grouped in 2 different conferences (West & East). The data is from 2021-2022 NBA Season. My observations will be focused on providing a very broad level of understanding basketball that I think would benefit new fans/viewers if they ever attend or watch a basketball game.
Observations:
First, Viewers can expect most NBA teams to score 100+ in a basketball game. From the graph, and in the Eastern Conference, the average score in home games is about 114 points, whereas in the Western Conference, the average score in home games is about 116 points. In comparison to historical data, the averages are significant because the level of NBA talent is better, rules changed, and the game is more offense oriented than defense. It is important to note that high scoring games are not absolutely guaranteed because there are always an exception and factors that can have an impact on the scoreboard. The objective of the basketball game is for a team to have more points than the opposing team. There are more components that goes into winning a basketball game than only having the best players on a team.
Second, Do not expect to see a lot of high quality defense being played by both Home and Away teams. Playing perfect defense in basketball is difficult because it is a team sport that involves a lot of movement, and quick decisions. There are a lot of factors that can be attributed to why defense is played poorly, but 3 notable factors are the NBA rule changes, basketball IQ, and the referees that officiated the games. Viewers can expect there will always be a penalty/rule violations being called by referees. There will be opportunities for teams to earn more points or prevent the other team from earning more points.
Third, Viewers will see a lot of 3 pointers being shot by both Home and Away teams. However, this statistic alone is not the sole factor in winning a game. There are other aspects to consider such as the number of turnovers, team fouls, rebounding, team strategy, and making free-throws.
Conclusion: Analytics can help NBA organizations in making strategic and financial decisions. For example, in the 2021-2022 NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers scored on average 117 points per game, but only won 21 home games out of their 33 total wins of a 82 games season. This is a good case that shows Analytics can have a role in identifying areas of deficiencies of a NBA team, and inform management to make necessary trades, drafts, signing free agents, and more.
There’s a lot more I can say about this, but data visualizations and analyses of NBA Basketball that I plan to do in the future will be more in depth and technical. For now, I wanted to inform viewers who are new to basketball to have a general understanding of some aspects they can expect and enjoy watching the basketball game.
I would note a few limitations to this are the teams players data, and the other NBA teams in the dataset. This dataset left out the other underperforming teams. I think having team travel itinerary, and player injury data would make this type of analyses more insightful.