Sports Stats Spotlight, 2021-22 NBA Case Study

INTRODUCTION

Project description: Basketball is full of stats on players and teams.

This project is a case study using NBA data for the 2021-22 season.

What I Learned

Nikola Jokić is an outlier with excellent stats for rebounds, assists, and points scored
Most high score, high assist players are point guards
when measuring 3-point efficiency, the strongest position varies by team
Rayjon Tucker stands out as a 3-point scorer while
Trae Young stands out for overall points scored
The greatest number of assists are made by point guards, followed by shooting guards
James Harden, a point guard, has an impressive number of assists

DATA

The data can be found here https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2022_totals.html

The dataset contains 200 rows and 31 fields

This data set contains player stats for the 2021-22 NBA season.

Data was cleaned, filtered, and analyzed using Tableau Public

ANALYSIS

I started by taking a look at the distribution of players points, assists, and rebounds

The bubble plot shows assists, points, & rebounds. Nikola Jokić is a center in a sea of point guards for high points, assists, and rebounds

My next task was to visualize the distribution of 3-point scorers.

This heat map highlights 3-point efficiency by team and position. Darker color shows greater succes landing that downtown shot.

I became curious about who the top 3-point scoring players were, and if an older players might be at the top.

Top 10 3-point scorers in the 2021-22 season. While I expected older players with more experience to have higher 3-point averages, the top 3-point scorer is 24 year old Rayjon Tucker.

Naturally, that led to the question; “Who are the top point scoring players on each team?”

This stacked bar chart is ranking players’ points scored by team. Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks comes in hot at 2155 points for the season followed by DeMar DeRozan of the Chicago Bulls at 2118.

Of course, we all no that “there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’”. Which leads to the question of who is making all of this fast paced action earn the teams points.

This tree map shows players with the most assists broken down by position. Point guards make the most assists, followed by shooting guards. James Harden has the most assists for the 2021-22 season.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

Most high score, high assist players are point guards, but Nikola Jokić is an outlier with excellent stats for rebounds, assists, and points scored
The strongest position for 3-point efficiency varies by team
Rayjon Tucker stands out as a 3-point scorer while Trae Young stands out for overall points scored
The greatest number of assists are made by point guards, followed by shooting guards. James Harden, a point guard, has the most impressive number of assists for the 2021-22 season

Feel free to check it out on Tableau Public here: https://public.tableau.com/views/NBAProject_16725346382720/NBAAnalysis2021-22?:language=en-US&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link