8 ms·

Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots

200 points by akharris 14y ago

jere 14y ago
I looked at the team graph and thought it wasn't going to be very informative, but was surprised to see some of the very distinctive player patterns (e.g. Battier). The graphics are brilliant. Is the image -> graph effect part of some library I haven't heard of?
davidfischer 14y ago
Goldsberry was great at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference[1]. The charts really highlight a player's strengths and weaknesses. A quick look at Ray Allen's chart (in Goldsberry's conference paper) shows how much better he is when he goes to his right. Kobe really needs to cut down on those 12-15' baseline jumpers that he seems to favor. When I look at the graphics from the NYT article, the player whose chart really sticks out is James Harden. His efficiency this year is amazing and a lot of it has to do with shot selection. Most of his shots are 3-pointers or within 8' which are considered the two highest value shots on the court. Some team with a Moneyball style general manager (somewhat common in the NBA from my understanding) will pay him handsomely yet probably still not what his contribution merits. [1] http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=6132 http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=6132 Edit: trivial edit for small error
- aswanson 14y ago
  I wonder how much the quality of the shots he takes are a function of his teammates and their offensive sets. Would be really interesting if shot quality could be completely decoupled from the environment.
  - ricefield 14y ago
    Yeah, its not the simple - you can't just take a look at the data and tell the players, "take these shots, not these shots." Generally, you get a sense of where you're most effective and where you're not, but either the offense doesn't set you up that way all the time, the defense is doing too good of a job, and the shot clock is running out. Bottom line, IMO its really helpful to look at these (I love data visualization) but you have to be careful not to fall into the trap of oversimplifying.
- lotharbot 14y ago
  I enjoy looking for the same sort of shot pattern team-by-team, rather than just player-by-player. For example, during the parts of the year the Nuggets were playing well, the vast majority of their shots were either from within 5 feet of the rim or from outside the arc (like, they'd have 10 or fewer shots not from those areas, out of 80+ total shots). When they were playing poorly, some games they'd take 30 midrange jumpers.
jcromartie 14y ago
I thought these might be D3/SVG visualizations, but it looks like a custom chart library developed by NYT themselves, with drawing done in a Canvas element. I think a browser might choke on this many visualizations in SVG but I'm not sure. I've seen libraries take all sorts of approaches, but I'm leaning towards Canvas for really fluid and precise graphics. Edit: I'm baffled why someone would downvote this.
- noomerikal 14y ago
  Looking at chart2.js - canvas if the browser supports it with a fallback to flash.
joering2 14y ago
Very cool. Now all you need is bunch of robot-basketball players with this data plugged in, and those guys' asses are kicked to high heaven, lol!!
jredwards 14y ago
The source of this is: http://courtvisionanalytics.com/ http://courtvisionanalytics.com/ Kirk Goldsberry does these. He's been doing this for a while. The NYT may have developed the library that they're using here (I'm not sure), but the idea and the data visualization concept are his.
zachwill 14y ago
Incredible visualization. Seriously one of the best I've seen all year.
TylerE 14y ago
Anyone else think the granularity is a bit too high on these? Neat concept, but I have to wonder if they wouldn't be a lot easier to interpret with about half the point density.
corry 14y ago
Is there a publicly available data source for basketball stats like this? Curious where these datasets come from...
- DeanCollinsNYC 14y ago
  ESPN built an api for thier content but the TOS were crap so we decided against using any of it when building http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com
  - ashbrahma 14y ago
    Who did you end up using for the data?
- salman89 14y ago
  No publicly available that I've seen. Most companies use STATS inc
yock 14y ago
How are the statistics from which these visualizations are generated captured? Does the NBA have equipment on the court or in the arena to track players and the ball (something like how professional tennis is monitored)? Is it manual, with a person recording their own observations about player/ball placement? Post-game video analysis?
- grlthgn 14y ago
  The NBA manually records where the shots are taken, and if it is made or not by the stat person.
  - emehrkay 14y ago
    I knew a guy in college who got to do this for the Sixers one year. He got to sit relatively court-side and just had to keep an key on the game and write down everything. He used pen and pad, but I would imagine that capturing that data is a lot easier today. I was looking at espn's feed of the game the other night and they seem to have a lot of details about the game as the game is being played. things like "player missed 13 foot jump shot" and a graphic of a ball bouncing off of the rim and where it was shot from. Id imagine that they have a system like court stenographers so that they can quickly record info and send it to their servers.
- SoapSeller 14y ago
  Not the NBA, but some teams use a system called SportVU[0] that do auto player&ball tracking. I used to work on the system, so I can answer (some) questions about it. [0] http://www.sportvu.com/basketball.asp http://www.sportvu.com/basketball.asp
  - hammock 14y ago
    How does it work?
    - SoapSeller 14y ago
      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/all/1 http://www.wired.com/playbook/2011/04/nba-data-revolution/al...
DeanCollinsNYC 14y ago
For those of you watching the game tonight there is a live fan chat running from 9pm at - http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com/go/17762 http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com/go/17762
Shoomz 14y ago
This is pretty awesome. I love solid data, but it seems to me that this might be too much data and too few substantial takeaways...but the graphs are still fun to look at.
idoh 14y ago
Shane Battier is one of the smartest players in the NBA, and you can see it in action by looking at his shot chart.
- wisty 14y ago
  There's a massive (old) article on Battier - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?pagewanted=all 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.
  - idoh 14y ago
    Great article! "Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths."
marknutter 14y ago
Not 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 title this year. LeBron James has been lambasted for leaving his hometown team to try to win a championship with the Heat which has evaded him so far. The Heat are the most hated team in the league. By contrast, the Thunder is led by the league's leading scorer Kevin Durant who's appears to be one of the most humble superstars in the league. It's the ultimate good guys vs. bad guys matchup. LeBron, likely fueled by all the criticisms about his ability to perform in the clutch and his will to win, appears to be on a mission to prove everybody wrong and finally win his first championship. To put it in perspective, facing elimination in game 5 versus the Celtics, LeBron put on one of the best playoff performances in history scoring nearly half his team's points (http://www.nba.com/games/20120607/MIABOS/gameinfo.html http://www.nba.com/games/20120607/MIABOS/gameinfo.html). The series will be on ABC so you don't need cable to watch it. Catch at least one game.
- james33 14y ago
  You can be sure we'll be watching. Our new office is just 3 blocks from the arena in OKC and we can't wait!
  - ellyagg 14y ago
    Growing up in Seattle, it was hard not to downvote you.
- Goladus 14y ago
  > The Heat are the most hated team in the league. I'd say Heat and Thunder are tied for most hated team.
  - willyum 14y ago
    But even people who dislike the Thunder have a lot of respect for Durant
optimus 14y ago
Does any one know where to get access to the raw data? Does the NBA provide them "upon request" or did the author compile them manually?
mfringel 14y ago
I like how it shows where a player is comfortable and good (red clusters), and where a player is just comfortable (light green clusters).
ereckers 14y ago
I saw this posted earlier under a different title. The word "stunning" was in there referring to the use of images. Just interested in why you changed it and if there was any observable improvement in views/votes from the change.
spenrose 14y ago
As 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.
- rpearl 14y ago
  No... it isn't. In fact, including free throws, which are a completely different scenario than regular shots, would be misleading and furthermore, not any more complete. Free throws and shots are very different: free throws are taken with time and preparation, from a fixed location and no defender. Shots are taken on the clock, with whatever defense the opposition can put together, no preparation of the shot--they are much more fluid and require a different (albeit related) skill set.
- RobAtticus 14y ago
  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.
  - spenrose 14y ago
    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".
    - harlanlewis 14y ago
      Visualizing the ratio points from the line vs the rest of the floor could be interesting, but it doesn't say much about how they run their offense. As others noted, free throws occur at the same place every time and would seriously skew the chart - especially for lowpost/longrange players like James Harden. Maybe a step closer would be showing where a player was fouled that led to shots from the line.
    - achompas 14y ago
jimmytucson 14y ago
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.cgi?&player_id=bryanko01&year_id=2011 http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/shooting...
bearwithclaws 14y ago
Do 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-vs-thunder/ http://www.bballbreakdown.com/2012-nba-finals-preview-heat-v... Best analysis I've seen yet.
Nimi 14y ago
Please forgive me for bringing up something not directly related to this particular series, but economics professor Dave Berri ran some linear regressions on the box score stats of basketball games, and claims he can accurately measure how much wins per season each player is responsible for. (e.g. Team A won 40 games last season, player 1 produced 15 wins, player 2 produced another 10, player 3 produced another 8, and the remaining wins divide among the other players). He has a (sort of official) blog: http://wagesofwins.com/ http://wagesofwins.com/ I'm bringing this up because I think this may be of interest to the HN community. I, for one, was fascinated with his claims and their implications, hope this will interest some of you :-)
mkramlich 14y ago
Please no random sports fan chit-chat here. This is Hacker News folks. We have lots of other mainstream places for that sort of thing. Thank you.

200 points by akharris 14y ago

jere 14y ago

I looked at the team graph and thought it wasn't going to be very informative, but was surprised to see some of the very distinctive player patterns (e.g. Battier). The graphics are brilliant. Is the image -> graph effect part of some library I haven't heard of?

davidfischer 14y ago

Goldsberry was great at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference[1]. The charts really highlight a player's strengths and weaknesses. A quick look at Ray Allen's chart (in Goldsberry's conference paper) shows how much better he is when he goes to his right. Kobe really needs to cut down on those 12-15' baseline jumpers that he seems to favor. When I look at the graphics from the NYT article, the player whose chart really sticks out is James Harden. His efficiency this year is amazing and a lot of it has to do with shot selection. Most of his shots are 3-pointers or within 8' which are considered the two highest value shots on the court. Some team with a Moneyball style general manager (somewhat common in the NBA from my understanding) will pay him handsomely yet probably still not what his contribution merits. [1] http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=6132 http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=6132 Edit: trivial edit for small error

aswanson 14y ago
I wonder how much the quality of the shots he takes are a function of his teammates and their offensive sets. Would be really interesting if shot quality could be completely decoupled from the environment.
- ricefield 14y ago
  Yeah, its not the simple - you can't just take a look at the data and tell the players, "take these shots, not these shots." Generally, you get a sense of where you're most effective and where you're not, but either the offense doesn't set you up that way all the time, the defense is doing too good of a job, and the shot clock is running out. Bottom line, IMO its really helpful to look at these (I love data visualization) but you have to be careful not to fall into the trap of oversimplifying.
lotharbot 14y ago
I enjoy looking for the same sort of shot pattern team-by-team, rather than just player-by-player. For example, during the parts of the year the Nuggets were playing well, the vast majority of their shots were either from within 5 feet of the rim or from outside the arc (like, they'd have 10 or fewer shots not from those areas, out of 80+ total shots). When they were playing poorly, some games they'd take 30 midrange jumpers.

jcromartie 14y ago

I thought these might be D3/SVG visualizations, but it looks like a custom chart library developed by NYT themselves, with drawing done in a Canvas element. I think a browser might choke on this many visualizations in SVG but I'm not sure. I've seen libraries take all sorts of approaches, but I'm leaning towards Canvas for really fluid and precise graphics. Edit: I'm baffled why someone would downvote this.

noomerikal 14y ago
Looking at chart2.js - canvas if the browser supports it with a fallback to flash.

joering2 14y ago

Very cool. Now all you need is bunch of robot-basketball players with this data plugged in, and those guys' asses are kicked to high heaven, lol!!

jredwards 14y ago

The source of this is: http://courtvisionanalytics.com/ http://courtvisionanalytics.com/ Kirk Goldsberry does these. He's been doing this for a while. The NYT may have developed the library that they're using here (I'm not sure), but the idea and the data visualization concept are his.

zachwill 14y ago

Incredible visualization. Seriously one of the best I've seen all year.

TylerE 14y ago

Anyone else think the granularity is a bit too high on these? Neat concept, but I have to wonder if they wouldn't be a lot easier to interpret with about half the point density.

corry 14y ago

Is there a publicly available data source for basketball stats like this? Curious where these datasets come from...

DeanCollinsNYC 14y ago
ESPN built an api for thier content but the TOS were crap so we decided against using any of it when building http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com
- ashbrahma 14y ago
  Who did you end up using for the data?
salman89 14y ago
No publicly available that I've seen. Most companies use STATS inc

yock 14y ago

How are the statistics from which these visualizations are generated captured? Does the NBA have equipment on the court or in the arena to track players and the ball (something like how professional tennis is monitored)? Is it manual, with a person recording their own observations about player/ball placement? Post-game video analysis?

grlthgn 14y ago
The NBA manually records where the shots are taken, and if it is made or not by the stat person.
- emehrkay 14y ago
  I knew a guy in college who got to do this for the Sixers one year. He got to sit relatively court-side and just had to keep an key on the game and write down everything. He used pen and pad, but I would imagine that capturing that data is a lot easier today. I was looking at espn's feed of the game the other night and they seem to have a lot of details about the game as the game is being played. things like "player missed 13 foot jump shot" and a graphic of a ball bouncing off of the rim and where it was shot from. Id imagine that they have a system like court stenographers so that they can quickly record info and send it to their servers.
SoapSeller 14y ago
Not the NBA, but some teams use a system called SportVU[0] that do auto player&ball tracking. I used to work on the system, so I can answer (some) questions about it. [0] http://www.sportvu.com/basketball.asp http://www.sportvu.com/basketball.asp
- hammock 14y ago
  How does it work?
  - SoapSeller 14y ago
    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/all/1 http://www.wired.com/playbook/2011/04/nba-data-revolution/al...

DeanCollinsNYC 14y ago

For those of you watching the game tonight there is a live fan chat running from 9pm at - http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com/go/17762 http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com/go/17762

Shoomz 14y ago

This is pretty awesome. I love solid data, but it seems to me that this might be too much data and too few substantial takeaways...but the graphs are still fun to look at.

idoh 14y ago

Shane Battier is one of the smartest players in the NBA, and you can see it in action by looking at his shot chart.

wisty 14y ago
There's a massive (old) article on Battier - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?pagewanted=all 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.
- idoh 14y ago
  Great article! "Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths."

marknutter 14y ago

Not 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 title this year. LeBron James has been lambasted for leaving his hometown team to try to win a championship with the Heat which has evaded him so far. The Heat are the most hated team in the league. By contrast, the Thunder is led by the league's leading scorer Kevin Durant who's appears to be one of the most humble superstars in the league. It's the ultimate good guys vs. bad guys matchup. LeBron, likely fueled by all the criticisms about his ability to perform in the clutch and his will to win, appears to be on a mission to prove everybody wrong and finally win his first championship. To put it in perspective, facing elimination in game 5 versus the Celtics, LeBron put on one of the best playoff performances in history scoring nearly half his team's points (http://www.nba.com/games/20120607/MIABOS/gameinfo.html http://www.nba.com/games/20120607/MIABOS/gameinfo.html). The series will be on ABC so you don't need cable to watch it. Catch at least one game.

james33 14y ago
You can be sure we'll be watching. Our new office is just 3 blocks from the arena in OKC and we can't wait!
- ellyagg 14y ago
  Growing up in Seattle, it was hard not to downvote you.
Goladus 14y ago
> The Heat are the most hated team in the league. I'd say Heat and Thunder are tied for most hated team.
- willyum 14y ago
  But even people who dislike the Thunder have a lot of respect for Durant

optimus 14y ago

Does any one know where to get access to the raw data? Does the NBA provide them "upon request" or did the author compile them manually?

mfringel 14y ago

I like how it shows where a player is comfortable and good (red clusters), and where a player is just comfortable (light green clusters).

ereckers 14y ago

I saw this posted earlier under a different title. The word "stunning" was in there referring to the use of images. Just interested in why you changed it and if there was any observable improvement in views/votes from the change.

spenrose 14y ago

As 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.

rpearl 14y ago
No... it isn't. In fact, including free throws, which are a completely different scenario than regular shots, would be misleading and furthermore, not any more complete. Free throws and shots are very different: free throws are taken with time and preparation, from a fixed location and no defender. Shots are taken on the clock, with whatever defense the opposition can put together, no preparation of the shot--they are much more fluid and require a different (albeit related) skill set.
RobAtticus 14y ago
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.
- spenrose 14y ago
  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".
  - harlanlewis 14y ago
    Visualizing the ratio points from the line vs the rest of the floor could be interesting, but it doesn't say much about how they run their offense. As others noted, free throws occur at the same place every time and would seriously skew the chart - especially for lowpost/longrange players like James Harden. Maybe a step closer would be showing where a player was fouled that led to shots from the line.
  - achompas 14y ago

jimmytucson 14y ago

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.cgi?&player_id=bryanko01&year_id=2011 http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/shooting...

bearwithclaws 14y ago

Do 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-vs-thunder/ http://www.bballbreakdown.com/2012-nba-finals-preview-heat-v... Best analysis I've seen yet.

Nimi 14y ago

Please forgive me for bringing up something not directly related to this particular series, but economics professor Dave Berri ran some linear regressions on the box score stats of basketball games, and claims he can accurately measure how much wins per season each player is responsible for. (e.g. Team A won 40 games last season, player 1 produced 15 wins, player 2 produced another 10, player 3 produced another 8, and the remaining wins divide among the other players). He has a (sort of official) blog: http://wagesofwins.com/ http://wagesofwins.com/ I'm bringing this up because I think this may be of interest to the HN community. I, for one, was fascinated with his claims and their implications, hope this will interest some of you :-)

mkramlich 14y ago

Please no random sports fan chit-chat here. This is Hacker News folks. We have lots of other mainstream places for that sort of thing. Thank you.