Kai’s InfoVis Final Project:

NBA in historical context

Kai Li10/28/2013

Dataset

• A number of datasets from Basketball-reference.com are consulted for this visualization project:• NBA & ABA Most Valuable Player Award Winners:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/mvp.html• NBA & ABA Coach Directory: http://www.basketball-reference.com/coaches/• NBA & ABA Team Index: http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/

• Basketball-reference.com is one of the most comprehensive sources for basketball data online. But the information about their data sources are not discusses in detail on their website.

Audience

• Laymen who are interested in NBA games and basketball researchers are the top two targeted user groups identified for this project:• NBA game fans:

• Having different level of interests in the games, who may or may not get access to related data and facts

• This project will be a source for them to get the data, digest the meaning in a easier way, and have fun

• Basketball researchers:• Getting access to a large number of data• This project tries to offer them better perspectives on the relationships between the

data and how to present these information in a more meaningful way

Questions

• 1. What are the histories of all the NBA teams?• 2. Who are the greatest coaches in NBA history, and how are their

performances?• 3. Who are the greatest players in NBA’s history? • 4. How does MVP award reflect a player’s real performance?• 5. How long distances are there between current players and

historical records holders?

Sketch #1: A history of all NBA teams

• X-axis: years• Y-axis: list of NBA teams• Color (of the brackets): each

team’s winning rate by year• Star (inside the brackets):

who got the championship that year

Sketch #2: The best NBA coaches all time

• X-axis: winning games / years• Y-axis: list of (selected)

coaches• First part of bars: winning and

losing records for each of the coaches• Second part of bars: his

winning rates by year

Sketch #3: The best NBA MVP player

• X-axis: Player efficiency rating• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pla

yer_efficiency_rating

• Y-axis: Win Share• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi

n_shares

• Each item in this matrix represents the MVP player in a given year, marking six aspects of his performance that year

Sketch #4: How hard it is to become all-time leader?

• Y-axis: historical records

Thank you!