Okay, so today I decided to dig into the stats from the Knicks vs. Sacramento Kings game. I’ve been trying to get better at understanding basketball stats, and I figured this would be a good way to practice.
Getting Started
First, I needed to find a reliable source for the game data. I tried a few different sports websites until I found one that had a really clean layout for player stats. It made things so much easier.
Diving into the Data
Once I had the data, I started going through it player by player. Man, there are a lot of numbers! I focused on these:
- Points (PTS): How many points each player scored. Pretty basic, but important!
- Rebounds (REB): How many times a player grabbed the ball after a missed shot. This is split into offensive and defensive rebounds.
- Assists (AST): How many times a player passed the ball to a teammate who then scored.
- Field Goal Percentage (FG%): What percentage of a player’s shots actually went in.
- Three-Point Percentage (3P%): Same as above, but only for three-point shots.
- Free Throw Percentage (FT%): percentage of successfull free throws.
Making Sense of It All
I started looking for standouts. Who scored the most? Who had a ton of rebounds? I noticed a few players had really high shooting percentages, which was cool. It’s interesting to see how different players contribute in different ways. Some are all about scoring, while others are workhorses grabbing rebounds or setting up plays with assists.
My “Aha!” Moment
I realized that just looking at points doesn’t tell the whole story. A player might score a lot, but if they take a ton of shots and miss most of them (low FG%), they might not be as effective as someone who scores less but makes a higher percentage of their shots. same for the rebounds, assists and the other stats, a player might have impressive stats on just one category.
It was a fun little project! I definitely feel like I have a better grasp on how to read and interpret basketball player stats now. Might try this again with another game soon!
