Basketball scoring in NBA games: An example of complexity

Guerra, Yves de Saá; González, Juan Manuel Martín; Montesdeoca, Samuel Sarmiento; Ruiz, David R. Yáñez; López, Nieves Arjonilla; García-Manso, Juan Manuel

doi:10.1007/s11424-013-2282-3

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Thus, this evolving trend could also be related to changes in the competitiveness of NBA seasons. However, studies have suggested that the competitive balance in NBA is stable over time and close to its average [14,16] and that the scoring process is well described by a nearly unbiased random walk [9], suggesting that NBA teams are quite balanced. Furthermore, a decrease in the intensity of home advantage over time was also observed by Jamieson [66] for several sports.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The former aspect along with a comparison between men and women soccer leagues was also discussed by Pollard and Gómez [78]. There are also evidence that home advantage is more intense at the beginning of basketball matches [51], time dependent for handball [58], and that the scoring processes is highly dynamic [16] for basketball. All these features raise several questions on the microscopic effects of the home advantage, and also on how these features may possibly differ among teams and time era.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…This unprecedented amount of data enabled scholars to probe patterns of such competitive events to a degree not before possible, answering many academic questions as well as elucidating sport folklores. Examples of such investigations include random walks or diffusive interpretations of the scoring process [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], discussions about the efficiency of sport competitions [4,8,[13][14][15][16][17], analysis of player and team performance via networks tools [18][19][20][21][22] and tracking data [23], performance evolution in the Olympic Games [24], the role of coaching experience in the effective use of timeouts [25], reciprocity in passing patterns [26], cooperative play [27], Matthew effect in the longevity of careers in professional sport [28,29], and the hot-hand phenomenon [10,[30][31][32][33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

2016

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The idea that the success rate of a team increases when playing home is broadly accepted and documented for a wide variety of sports. Investigations on the so-called “home advantage phenomenon” date back to the 70’s and ever since has attracted the attention of scholars and sport enthusiasts. These studies have been mainly focused on identifying the phenomenon and trying to correlate it with external factors such as crowd noise and referee bias. Much less is known about the effects of home advantage in the “microscopic” dynamics of the game (within the game) or possible team-specific and evolving features of this phenomenon. Here we present a detailed study of these previous features in the National Basketball Association (NBA). By analyzing play-by-play events of more than sixteen thousand games that span thirteen NBA seasons, we have found that home advantage affects the microscopic dynamics of the game by increasing the scoring rates and decreasing the time intervals between scores of teams playing home. We verified that these two features are different among the NBA teams, for instance, the scoring rate of the Cleveland Cavaliers team is increased ≈0.16 points per minute (on average the seasons 2004–05 to 2013–14) when playing home, whereas for the New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets) this rate increases in only ≈0.04 points per minute. We further observed that these microscopic features have evolved over time in a non-trivial manner when analyzing the results team-by-team. However, after averaging over all teams some regularities emerge; in particular, we noticed that the average differences in the scoring rates and in the characteristic times (related to the time intervals between scores) have slightly decreased over time, suggesting a weakening of the phenomenon. This study thus adds evidence of the home advantage phenomenon and contributes to a deeper understanding of this effect over the course of games.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

2016

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“…Although there is increasing interest in quantitative analysis and modeling in sports [32][33][34][35][36], many questions remain about what patterns or principles, if any, cut across different sports, what basic dynamical processes provide good models of within-game events, and the degree to which the outcomes of games may be predicted from within-game events alone. The comprehen-sive database of scoring events we use here to investigate such questions is unusual for both its scope (every league game over 9-10 seasons), its breadth (covering four sports), and its depth (timing and attribution information on every point in every game).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scoring dynamics across professional team sports: tempo, balance and predictability

Merritt

Clauset

2014

EPJ Data Sci.

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Despite growing interest in quantifying and modeling the scoring dynamics within professional sports games, relative little is known about what patterns or principles, if any, cut across different sports. Using a comprehensive data set of scoring events in nearly a dozen consecutive seasons of college and professional (American) football, professional hockey, and professional basketball, we identify several common patterns in scoring dynamics. Across these sports, scoring tempo-when scoring events occur-closely follows a common Poisson process, with a sport-specific rate. Similarly, scoring balance-how often a team wins an event-follows a common Bernoulli process, with a parameter that effectively varies with the size of the lead. Combining these processes within a generative model of gameplay, we find they both reproduce the observed dynamics in all four sports and accurately predict game outcomes. These results demonstrate common dynamical patterns underlying within-game scoring dynamics across professional team sports, and suggest specific mechanisms for driving them. We close with a brief discussion of the implications of our results for several popular hypotheses about sports dynamics.

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“…Este conjunto de características podrían favorecer que la NBA tenga una mayor atracción para los aficionados de todos los equipos, al existir mayores evoluciones de los equipos en cuanto a las posiciones finales a lo largo de las temporadas. Recientes estudios muestran una gran incertidumbre en cada uno de los encuentros de la NBA, con una gran aleatoriedad en los vencedores (de Saá Guerra et al, 2013).…”

Section: E P O R T Eunclassified

Competitive balance in European basketball leagues and the NBA

García-Unanue¹,

Godoy²,

Villarrubia³

et al. 2014

CCD

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ResumenLas ligas deportivas dependen del equilibrio competitivo entre los equipos para ser atractivas para los espectadores, de ahí la aparición del balance competitivo. Por ello, las distintas ligas deportivas han adquirido diferentes formatos que determinarán su competitividad. El objetivo de este artículo es comparar el balance competitivo de la NBA y las principales ligas europeas, teniendo en cuenta la NBA en su conjunto y cada una de sus conferencias de forma independiente. Las variables utilizadas para medir el balance competitivo han sido el índice Hirschman-Herfindal y las ratios C5 y C8. Los resultados muestran un mejor balance competitivo de la NBA en conjunto respecto a las ligas europeas, sin embargo estas diferencias desaparecen al analizar las conferencias de forma independiente. Se concluye que al tener en cuenta cada una de las conferencias de forma independiente, con una estructura más similar a las ligas europeas, se presenta un balance competitivo parecido bajo los indicadores utilizados. Sin embargo, la NBA incluye limitaciones en la competición que siguen favoreciendo la posibilidad de que sea más atractiva para el espectador. AbstractSports leagues depend on competitive equilibrium between teams to make it attractive for the fans; from that comes competitive balance. Thus, sport leagues have acquired different structures that determine their competitiveness. The aim of this paper is to compare the competitive balance of the NBA and the primary leagues in Europe, given the NBA as a whole as well as each of its conferences individually. The measurements utilised were the Hirschman-Herfindahl index and the C5 and C8 ratios. The results demonstrate a better competitive balance in the NBA as a whole than in the European leagues; however, the differences disappear when each conference is analysed as an individual league. We conclude, then, that given each conference individually, with structures that are similar to the European leagues, there is a competitive balance, taking into consideration the indicators we have used. However, the NBA includes limitations in the competition that favour the possibility of being more attractive for the fans.

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Basketball scoring in NBA games: An example of complexity

Cited by 16 publications

References 17 publications

The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

Scoring dynamics across professional team sports: tempo, balance and predictability

Competitive balance in European basketball leagues and the NBA

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