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Tag Archives: Kobe Bryant
2013 NBA Anti-Awards!
It’s time again for The NBA Anti-Awards! These awards (playfully) recognize some of the most miserable and discouraging statistical achievements in basketball. The basketball analytics movement has been evolving and using visual and graphic representations to communicate data has become more and more important. I tried to add some of those visual components to the final awards this season, really emphasizing the ugliness of the numbers. This is also the 3rd season in which … Continue reading
The Myth of Danger
Every year as the playoffs approach one thing is guaranteed. A team or two always gets marked as “the team no one should want to face.” The teams normally fall into one of two categories. First the young up and coming team that does something better than anyone else in the league. Think the Grizzlies of a few years ago, who excelled at the slowdown grind it out game because of an elite defense. … Continue reading
Free Throw Mind Games
Last week, I wrote about the multitude of free throw rituals that shooters engage in across the NBA. From my novice perspective, I identified a few situational observations, such as how Steve Nash stayed locked to the line, while Kobe Bryant went for strolls. Then I speculated whether wandering about the charity stripe after shooting the first foul shot was conducive to draining the second. Ultimately, I concluded (albeit weakly) that personal routines are … Continue reading
A Good Day to Die Hard
This is the time of year when I seem to take a step back from my usual fanaticism over the NBA and relax up until the chaotic, drama-filled adventure that is the NBA Playoffs comes around. But something propelled me to watch the Lakers-Warriors game on Friday night. I can’t tell you what it was. Divine intervention? If anybody asked, my response would have been a logical, “the Lakers are fighting for a Playoffs spot and … Continue reading
Objectivity, In A Subjective World
This week ESPN gave us a snapshot of what’s become one of their standard summer projects, #NBARank. As an end-of-season treat they put together an early preview, giving their panel of 111 contributors (myself included) the standard task of ranking each player on a scale of 1-to-10 in terms of ‘current quality.’ This time instead of evaluating the whole league we were just asked to assess a core group, assembling a list of the … Continue reading
The Free Throw Hokey Pokey
This piece is not about the camerawork at a basketball game, but for this introduction, it’ll be about the camerawork at a basketball game. You can often tell when the producer is slacking off. He or she hoards an army of cameras, sprawled across the arena, ready to provide their unique view of the game. During periods of inactivity, the producer must cut to the most action-y shot he or she can find: a … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week I decided to take a look at the impact of free throws on the final outcome. Is getting to the line more important than taking advantage of the freebies when a team gets there? During a 54 game sample, I recorded the free throws attempted and the free throw percentage for every team. Winning teams shot an average of 77.1% on 21.9 free throws per game while losing teams made 76% of … Continue reading
Harden Week: Piling Stats Upon Stats
Welcome to Harden Week, a celebration of all things James Harden! Kyle Soppe is a regular contributor to Hickory-High, specializing in the identification of unique numeric accomplishments. You can find more from him at Hardwood Paroxysm and on Twitter, @unSOPable23. – James Harden made 10+ free throws six times in a 12-day stretch in late December. Kobe Bryant did so six times from December 9th to March 21st. It is worth noting that Kobe … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
For this week I decided to chart the importance of turning turnovers into points. In the 52 games this week, the winning team scored 18.12 points per game off of turnovers while losing teams managed just 14.02 points. That may not seem like much, but when you consider that 17.31% of the games this week either went to overtime or were decided by four or fewer points, the ability to score points off of … Continue reading
Weekly Stats Recap
This week’s Stat Study was done with the intention to determine the impact of playing a back to back in terms of total shooting percentage (TS%) and turnover rate (TOR). To understand this study, one must be familiar with these metrics. Total shooting percentage created a total metric of shooting accuracy looking at three-pointers, two-pointers and free throws. Turnover rate is a simple tally of the percentage of possessions that end in a turnover. … Continue reading
