Tracking players on court

gmf05

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Apr 26, 2015, 2:33:40 PM4/26/15

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Hey all,

So I've pulled the JSON for NBA play by play data. I wanted to compute simple +\- stats but realized that declaring the players on the floor through quarter changes, etc. Is non-trivial. Just curious, does anyone have a simple workaround for this?

Evan Zamir

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Apr 26, 2015, 2:43:39 PM4/26/15

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Like you said, it’s non-trivial.

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On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 11:33 AM, gmf05 <gfidd...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey all,

So I've pulled the JSON for NBA play by play data. I wanted to compute simple +\- stats but realized that declaring the players on the floor through quarter changes, etc. Is non-trivial. Just curious, does anyone have a simple workaround for this?

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gmf05

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Apr 26, 2015, 3:18:02 PM4/26/15

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Someone must have solved it to compute +/- at all. Just curious what other people have done.

Evan Zamir

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Apr 26, 2015, 3:25:44 PM4/26/15

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Yeah I have solved it. It's the underlying algorithm for my whole site. Basically you know a player is on the court when he performs an action in the play-by-play or is substituted out or in. You just have to write some code to track this state. That is the non-trivial part.

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On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 12:18 PM, gmf05 <gfidd...@gmail.com> wrote:

Someone must have solved it to compute +/- at all. Just curious what other people have done.

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gmf05

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Apr 28, 2015, 9:34:17 AM4/28/15

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Do you use play-by-play from NBA.com and/or other data? I tried what you describe with NBA.com play-by-play and found that, while it often works, it's not always enough.

For example, even in JSON format the play-by-play doesn't distinguish between Ben Gordon and Aaron Gordon here (http://www.nba.com/games/20141028/ORLNOP/gameinfo.html).

Jerry Vinokurov

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Apr 28, 2015, 9:53:36 AM4/28/15

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So, I use the JSON data from Sports Illustrated to achieve this. The SI data tells you who is on the court to start the game, but not the quarter. From there, you need to keep track of any substitutions. Once a new quarter starts, keep track of any player who is involved in a play or is substituted; once a player has become involved in an event, you know he was on the court to start the quarter. The benefit of the SI JSON data (I don't know about the NBA.com data) is that it references players not just by name but by a unique ID, so you never confuse e.g. Aaron Gordon with Ben Gordon.

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Evan Zamir

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Apr 28, 2015, 1:15:36 PM4/28/15

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The SI feed looks great. The fact that it's already json makes it much more convenient than the stuff I've been scraping.

-evan

On Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 6:53:36 AM UTC-7, grapesmoker wrote:

So, I use the JSON data from Sports Illustrated to achieve this. The SI data tells you who is on the court to start the game, but not the quarter. From there, you need to keep track of any substitutions. Once a new quarter starts, keep track of any player who is involved in a play or is substituted; once a player has become involved in an event, you know he was on the court to start the quarter. The benefit of the SI JSON data (I don't know about the NBA.com data) is that it references players not just by name but by a unique ID, so you never confuse e.g. Aaron Gordon with Ben Gordon.

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 9:34 AM, gmf05 <gfidd...@gmail.com> wrote:

Do you use play-by-play from NBA.com and/or other data? I tried what you describe with NBA.com play-by-play and found that, while it often works, it's not always enough.

For example, even in JSON format the play-by-play doesn't distinguish between Ben Gordon and Aaron Gordon here (http://www.nba.com/games/20141028/ORLNOP/gameinfo.html).

On Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 3:25:44 PM UTC-4, Evan Zamir wrote:

Yeah I have solved it. It's the underlying algorithm for my whole site. Basically you know a player is on the court when he performs an action in the play-by-play or is substituted out or in. You just have to write some code to track this state. That is the non-trivial part.

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On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 12:18 PM, gmf05 <gfidd...@gmail.com> wrote:
Someone must have solved it to compute +/- at all. Just curious what other people have done.

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Grant Fiddyment

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Apr 28, 2015, 1:42:33 PM4/28/15

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This SI data is indeed wonderful! So thorough and organized.

FYI You can query NBA.com for JSON using the links below. Most data go back as far as 1996-97. Not perfect but potentially useful -- especially the shot charts.

===

PLAY-BY-PLAY:

http://stats.nba.com/stats/playbyplay?GameID=*GAMEID*&RangeType=0&StartPeriod=0&EndPeriod=0&StartRange=0&EndRange=0&playbyplay=undefined

SHOT CHART:

sc_url = http://stats.nba.com/stats/shotchartdetail?Season=&SeasonType=Regular+Season&LeagueID=00&TeamID=0&PlayerID=0&GameID=*GAMEID*&Outcome=&Location=&Month=0&SeasonSegment=&DateFrom=&DateTo=&OpponentTeamID=0&VsConference=&VsDivision=&Position=&RookieYear=&GameSegment=&Period=0&LastNGames=0&ContextFilter=&ContextMeasure=FG_PCT&zone-mode=basic&viewShots=true

BOX SCORE:

http://stats.nba.com/stats/boxscore?GameID=*GAMEID*&RangeType=0&StartPeriod=0&EndPeriod=0&StartRange=0&EndRange=0&playbyplay=undefined

-evan

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Jerry Vinokurov

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Apr 28, 2015, 1:45:31 PM4/28/15

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Another thing you can do is find the SportVu data by looking at the "Events" on the stats page. There's an API call there that basically gives you every player's position on the court for each event in JSON form.

http://stats.nba.com/stats/locations_getmoments/?eventid=337&gameid=0021400001

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Evan Zamir

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Apr 28, 2015, 2:36:31 PM4/28/15

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Wow, that's awesome.

-evan

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