Author: Benjamin Xiao

I am a data practitioner who loves making simple, powerful visualizations and working with machine learning algorithms to learn more about the world. Basketball is incredibly dynamic, and it only takes one player to change an entire game plan. Data has stories hidden within it, and I want to reveal why my favorite team is better than yours is. And why Ben Simmons is amazing.

The 3-Point Percentage Inflection Point

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Well, that’s embarrassing. Modern NBA media and analytics put extreme emphasis on the 3-point shot and its efficiency over several 2-point shots. After all, 3 > 2 is indisputable. Out of all the metrics created, 3 point percentage…

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A Reshaped, Modern Playoff Format with Fresh Drama

Why should we do this anyways? The old format works fine. Now hear me out. I’m not saying the current playoff formatting is broken. I think it’s pretty optimal for scheduling purposes, but it’s just that. There are…

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Old Championships, Modern Players

Introduction A few weeks ago, I saw a post on the NBA subreddit putting the 2003 San Antonio Spurs’ championship into perspective by comparing its roster to current players. While the original author’s logic is far too simple…

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A Look into the Top 50 Scoring Seasons

This post extracts the top 50 scoring seasons since 1981, the introduction of the 3-point line. This new mechanic undoubtedly changed the way players score, but how do the top scorers actually differ? You can view an interactive…

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The Evolution of the 3-Point Shot

In the past few years, we’ve seen various statistics showing the NBA audience all the new 3-point records and how differently the 3-point line is used now. For comparison, the leader of the ’87 – ’88 season was…

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