NBA Player-Season Map

July 12, 2007 9:28 PM

Completely amazing graph of every NBA player for every season in which he played at least five minutes since 1979. Points Per Game are on the Y-Axis, sum total of every other stat on the X-axis, with the data points colored with RGB depending on the player's statistical tendencies during that season. Full explanation of methodology here. Gigantic monitor recommended. Via the always excellent TrueHoop.
posted by Kwine (20 comments total)

I love how just about every outlier is MJordan.
posted by jourman2 at 9:37 PM on July 12, 2007

Also, I wonder if this helps answer yesterdays askmefi question.
posted by jourman2 at 9:40 PM on July 12, 2007

Also of interest are all the dennis rodman and ben wallace hits in the lower right corner.
posted by yeoz at 9:44 PM on July 12, 2007

Ha, jourman2 beat me to it. I thought, I bet those outliers are Jordan, and sure enough.
posted by Falconetti at 9:51 PM on July 12, 2007

dennis rodman also is an interesting spot on the graph. he can be found in the bottom right of the graph,, meaning few points but many blocks - and those are some of the same years as the great jordan years
posted by Flood at 9:52 PM on July 12, 2007

I love how just about every outlier is MJordan.

Yeah, really illustrates what he was doing. My dad and I would go to watch him put the beat down on the Mav's. It was the only game we would go to all year.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 9:54 PM on July 12, 2007

Wow, this is really cool, thanks. It's interesting to see how some players like Jordan and Kobe have styles that change a lot over the years (lots of different colors), while most players are pretty static (check out Ewing, Stockton, and Mutombo).
posted by equalpants at 10:41 PM on July 12, 2007

You guys all forgot about Hakeem 'the dream' Olajuwon - one of the best of all time - if not the best of all time.
posted by matkline at 11:14 PM on July 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd like to see this graph with only the top 50 or so players, maybe a graph that shows how the supposed top 50 all-time players compare.

I'd also like to see more graphs in game reports. Just a double line chart showing each team's rising score over time would be a good start for explaining the whole game to someone who wasn't there. Fill in the empty space in the top left and bottom right corners with some player stats and you've got a box that explains the game at a glance.
posted by pracowity at 3:36 AM on July 13, 2007

ESPN does those graphs on their web site, and you can tell a lot about the game just from the double-line graph.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:12 AM on July 13, 2007

I'd also like to see more graphs in game reports.

Here's something that I was working on last year that seemed moderately interesting (abandoned it due to the flaky play-by-play data)

http://sports.ammurapi.com/gameStats.php?game=20&team=h
posted by xorry at 6:25 AM on July 13, 2007

I love interesting visual displays of information. Very cool.
posted by dpx.mfx at 6:58 AM on July 13, 2007

The plight of the Timberwolves: all sorts of KGarnett0*s in the upper right. And Rwittman90, extreme lower left, is currently helping to run them into the ground. Of course, most of that ground-running is the fault of KMcHale**, who seems to be lurking surprisingly close to the center of the cloud.
posted by COBRA! at 6:58 AM on July 13, 2007

I don't even remotely care about basketball but I find the graph fascinating.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:19 AM on July 13, 2007

Someone alert Bill Simmons....
posted by gnutron at 10:03 AM on July 13, 2007

Cool. I loves me my graffix.

Garnett's my man, and he shows up as the frontier on the far right of the 10-20 pt. range in '05. The reason I like to watch him is he pretty much equally divides his considerable effort between all three aspects of the game. Not too many players are that well rounded, as the graph shows.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:18 AM on July 13, 2007

That's great, I'm not really even into basketball but it's a great way to present the information - once I got a feel for it, it was easy to see what each area of the graph represented when it came to a player's style, skill, etc.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:31 PM on July 13, 2007

It's really great to see graphical confirmation that Jordan was not only dominant in his era, but remains dominant when compared against players before and since (of course, they played against different leagues, but there's probably some element of regression toward the mean and ... you know).

It would probably be easier to digest if it were just the top 50, but it would also change the rest of the graph (moving the mean up and to the right ...) so it wouldn't be the same comparison.

By the way, the Image Zoom add-on was handy for this.
posted by dhartung at 1:40 PM on July 13, 2007

Oh damn that's some good infographics.

And yeah, first thing I did was check out the corners (the outliers). BBradley, DRodman and MJordan all over the top right. Love the two data points that are actually off the graph: Rodman and Jordan.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:17 PM on July 13, 2007

Yup. I saw Rodman and Jordan and thought "That's all the explanation I need for the Bulls."

I was especially interested in the multitalented lists of Cyans, Yellows, Magentas, and Whites in the second link.

Although here in Jazz country everyone knows John Stockton was the "Whitest" player ever.
posted by rossmik at 6:15 PM on July 13, 2007