OT: NBA margins of victory of 20 or more

GrandAdmiralDan · Post #1 » by **GrandAdmiralDan** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:50 am

I am attempting to figure out a good (and not terribly time consuming) way to examine if there is a potential trend occurring in the NBA over recent years (someone else's theory, not my own).

What I need to see is the number of NBA games in each season decided by 20 or more points.

Certainly this seems like information one could obtain from the Elias Sports Bureau, but not being a member myself, that would take a bit of doing and using up a few favors I really need to save for something more important that might come up.

Does anyone have any other ideas for obtaining this information? I know a number of you are far more into the various statistical sites and communities than I am, so I thought perhaps you might be more capable of figuring this out than I would on my own. I know some of you track things such as point differential that Hollinger uses in his ranking system, and I thought maybe that data could be mined without too much difficulty to find the info I am looking for.

Thanks!

trwi7 · Post #2 » by **trwi7** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:17 pm

Maybe try stats.com?

sales @ stats.com

2775 Shermer Road Northbrook, Illinois, 60062

aaprigs311 · Post #3 » by **aaprigs311** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:38 pm

Don't ask me why, but this thread reminded me of the dude who was monitoring ref fixed games. You still alive guy and you have anything new to report? I think his handle was scassell something.

GrandAdmiralDan · Post #4 » by **GrandAdmiralDan** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:46 pm

I got this reply on the General Board

killbuckner wrote:I'd import this into a spreadsheet and add a column with the point differential.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... games.html

(the csv button will be eaiser I'd think)
Hit previous season and you can keep going back.

Unfortunately, my spreadsheet skills aren't what they should be.

Can someone explain how I do that? I use Google Spreadhseets these days but I'm sure however you do it in Excel is the same way. I guess I would need to have a point differential column that used the game score numbers to calculate and list the point differential, and I'd want to be able to sort those results in descending order. And then I'd want to be able to do one of those for every season. Does this sound too difficult/complicated? If so, nevermind. If not, please help

MikeIsGood · Post #5 » by **MikeIsGood** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:02 pm

I don't use Google Spreadsheets, but here is how you would do it in Excel...

Copy the selected data. Click on the upper- and left-most cell in Excel. Paste the data. Each item should be in it's own cell. Delete columns 1 (Date) and 5 (OT), and you could also get rid of the teams if you so choose. Do this by right-clicking at the top of the columns (where it lists A, B, C, etc.). Then, in the next available column, set up an equation that subtracts the applicable columns (to note, there may be a "differential" function, which would give you the absolute value which would be nicer for sorting). Then, as you mention, sort the results, and look for numbers 20 or over, or -20 and under.

Shouldn't take long at all, I wouldn't think.

MikeIsGood · Post #6 » by **MikeIsGood** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:09 pm

I don't know a differential function, but I just did the rest in about 3 minutes with the regular season at the link you just posted. I can email you this file if you wish, so you can use it as a guide.

Let me know.

LISTEN2JAZZ · Post #7 » by **LISTEN2JAZZ** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:23 pm

MikeIsGood wrote:there may be a "differential" function, which would give you the absolute value which would be nicer for sorting

Isn't it just:

=ABS(C1-D1)

Where C1 is one score, and D1 is the other?

Then I don't know how to count the number of 20+ other than to sort the results in order, and look at the row numbers.

energee · Post #8 » by **energee** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:25 pm

MikeIsGood wrote:Then, in the next available column, set up an equation that subtracts the applicable columns (to note, there may be a "differential" function, which would give you the absolute value which would be nicer for sorting).

You could type in the equation:
=ABS(First cell/column-Second cell/column)
to get the absolute value of the differential.
& then just copy and paste the equation all the way down the column.

MikeIsGood · Post #9 » by **MikeIsGood** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:32 pm

Nice. I didn't think to look for absolute value...even though I said those exact words above

MikeIsGood · Post #10 » by **MikeIsGood** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:34 pm

adamcz wrote:Then I don't know how to count the number of 20+ other than to sort the results in order, and look at the row numbers.

I'm sure you can somehow with the count function, but I think that's easy enough considering that once you sort you should just be able to find the last 20 and look and see what row you're on.

fam3381 · Post #11 » by **fam3381** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:19 pm

I just did it for 01/02 to this season and there's not an obvious trend...there were more blowouts last year than in any other year, but it's come back down this season.

Season Margin % of Games
2008 2009 20 13.3%
2007 2008 20 16.7%
2006 2007 20 13.6%
2005 2006 20 12.3%
2004 2005 20 11.8%
2003 2004 20 12.7%
2002 2003 20 14.9%
2001 2002 20 13.5%

This is actually pretty easy to do with BR's data being available in csv format and set up the way it is.