The playoffs are coming--there are just over 3 weeks left in the regular season. Most teams have roughly a dozen games left to try to nab a playoff seed ... or collect a few more lottery balls. With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to graph each team's wins by date to enable visual trend spotting.
The Southwest Division (shown below) provides some good examples:
- Dallas and San Antonio have been nip and tuck throughout the year; the Spurs currently hold a 1-game lead.
- New Orleans/Oklahoma City seems to have hit the wall. They were tied with Memphis at the end of February, but have since fallen 8 games behind.
- While they were healthy, the Rockets put together two months of good basketball; the rest of the season has been a disaster.
UPDATE: Changed graph to include net wins (wins minus losses) as well as total wins for improved visualization (based on a posted suggestion).
To see other examples, use the form above to select up to five different teams, or choose from one of the groups below:
| Eastern Conference | Western Conference | |||
| Divisions | Seeds (as of 3/28/06) | Divisions | Seeds (as of 3/28/06) | |
Other interesting combinations: see how the Pacers and Kings performed after the January 25 Peja-for-Artest trade, or how the Timberwolves and Celtics fared after the Szczerbiak/Davis 7-player deal on January 26. Feel free to add a comment if you find other notable comparisons.
Comments[5]
Posted by jgurney on March 27, 2006 7:34:51 AM PST
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Re: Charting 2005-06 Team Performance
This is interesting stuff, and clearly a lot of work. Thanks for taking the time to put something together that the rest of us can play with.
One interesting observation, is that almost all teams end up tracking at roughtly a 45 degree angle, upward. Long losing streaks represent as horizontal lines, winning streaks as steeper upward slopes.
It might be easier to see ther range and changes in the data if the chart plotted games above and below .500 on the Y-axis, instead of overall wins. Losing steaks would show as downward slopes, instead flat lines. You'd use much more of the graph and it might be easier to get a sense for changes in performance and the differences between teams.
Another thought, if I'm not already overstaying my welcome, would be to plot the X-axis as games played, instead of dates. It would remove the uncertainty here of how much a horizontal line results from losing vs. time off. The All Star break doesn't look like a period when everybody sucked, etc.
Thanks again
Comment from ben on March 28, 2006 10:20:40 AM PST
Good idea--I updated the chart to plot net wins instead of total wins.
Comment from Jason on March 29, 2006 12:20:17 AM PST
I liked the old version better, as it showed the long periods of time where the Blazers went without a win. Could you put the old version up somewhere?
Comment from Lance Uppercut on March 30, 2006 10:01:50 AM PST
OK--change "Net Wins" to "Wins" in the select box above to see the old version.
Comment from Jason on March 30, 2006 11:05:00 PM PST
The New Jersey Nets graph is interesting against quality opponentS - Detroit,Miami
Indiana. The East is a battle of 3 not 2 top teams.Thanks for the chart .Its excellent.
Comment from coach on April 3, 2006 10:56:11 AM PDT