The Jerry West Clutch Player of the Year Tracker January 15, 2023 The NBA recently announced the addition of a new performance award for the 2022-23 season: the Jerry West Trophy, to recognize the NBA Clut...
An Elam Ending Win Probability Calculator March 07, 2021 Despite the muted enthusiasm (and questionable judgment) surrounding this year's NBA All Star game, most would agree that bringing back ...
NBA Player Shooting Motions: A Data Dump January 24, 2021 Over 5 years ago, I published my first research on NBA motion tracking data . Where most analysis and research at that time (and still today...
An update to the Tension Index, with an assist from Claude Shannon April 11, 2020 The Tension Index, first launched 4 years ago on this site, has now been updated with a more solid mathematical underpinning. The purpose o...
New Feature: Measuring Pace Based on Time to Shot January 19, 2020 Nearly five years ago , I launched a possession tracking tool that did the following: Separated pace into its offensive and defensive comp...
New NBA feature: Dopplegamers November 17, 2019 A new feature has been added to the site's NBA Win Probability Box Scores , borne largely out of my own idle curiosity. Click the ...
The Hackulator: A Win Probability Based Guide for When to Foul April 22, 2019 In which we use advanced analytics to ruin basketball (as foretold by prophecy). What good is a sports win probability model? For one, it...
The NBA's new shot clock rule and its effect on pace September 29, 2018 Earlier this month, the NBA formally approved a change to its shot clock rules . Now, following an offensive rebound, the shot clock will re...
Judging Win Probability Models January 14, 2018 February 11, 2018 update: The Brier score chart at the bottom of this post had an incorrect value for the ESPN "Start of Game" sco...
Free Throw Deep Dives: Accuracy Scatter Plots May 29, 2017 In an effort to fill the void during this year's Superbowl-like interlude before the NBA Finals, I have added one more tool to my series...
Free Throw Deep Dives: The Windup and the Release May 06, 2017 Part three of an infrequent series . Click here to go straight to the interactive tool. In previous free throw deep dives, I used SportVU...
Playoff Seed Probability Motion Charts April 14, 2017 As I have done the last few seasons , here are motion charts that show how each team's playoff seed probabilities have evolved and s...
Deflategate follow up: Game charts for all 30 NBA teams January 09, 2017 In my NBA deflategate analysis , I shared charts for several teams that showed game by game coefficient of restitution for home games. Coef...
A Deflategate Analysis for the NBA January 08, 2017 Phil Jackson, 1986 : "We'd try to take some air out of the ball. You see, on the ball it says something like 'inflate ...
Bonus Tim Duncan Chart - Bank Shots July 16, 2016 On the occasion of Tim Duncan's retirement earlier this week, I used SportVU motion tracking data to call attention to an unnoticed elem...
The weirdest thing about Tim Duncan July 11, 2016 Tim Duncan announced his retirement today, after 19 seasons in the NBA. On Duncan and his impact to the game, there is no shortage of artic...
Inspired by last night's game 7, a new metric: The Tension Index June 20, 2016 Prior to Sunday night's game 7, I lamented the lack of in-game drama in this year's NBA finals. The average excitement index of tho...
Exciting Finals, Boring Games June 19, 2016 Regardless the outcome in tonight's game 7, we are guaranteed a compelling story. Either the " jump shooting " Warriors put a ...
Is pace contagious? May 30, 2016 Possessions, despite being analytical bedrock, are not an officially tracked NBA statistic. As a result, the counting of possessions in an N...
Endgame strategy in the NBA May 08, 2016 Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the #quick2 (sometimes). When a team is trailing by three late in a game (e.g. less than 30 s...