After building many visuals to illustrate different aspects of the dataset, it was time to start analysing them more carefully to find answers into our research questions. In a blogpost from a few weeks ago, we already determined which teams can be considered to be successful and which not, as well as that shooting more 3-point shots is one key to success. In this post, we'll see which teams can be considered to be good offensive teams, and which teams are good in defensive aspects of the game. As multiple different statistics can be considered to measure offensive/defensive performance, we use the faceted scatterplot-visuals to help us determine these teams.
The defensive statistics chosen into the plots represents a variety of different aspects of the game that can be used to measure the teams' defensive performance. In the top-left corner, there is a scatterplot visualizing the number points the opposing teams have been able to score on average, as well as the number of field goal attempts the opponent has gotten on average. Doing well in this plot (positioning close to the bottom-left corner) indicates that the opponents score little points and get few changes in the games against a specific team. The upper-right corner visualizes the 2 and 3-point accuracies of the opponent. With this plot, we can analyze the ability of the team to force the opponent to take shots that are more likely to fail. The plots on the bottom row show the average number of different defensive actions that the team takes within a game. Doing well in these plots (positioning close to the upper-right corner) indicates that the team is able to intercept the attacking plays of the opposing teams very often.
To determine the good defensive teams, we looked for teams that were doing better than the league averages across all seasons in both of the axis in as many plots as possible. The following graph highlights the teams that were "on the green" in at least three plots. The green color here illustrates the area where the team is better than the league average in both of the statistics of the plot. Similarly, yellow is the area where one attribute is better than the average and in the red, both attributes are worse than the average. The four best defensive teams in NBA, based on the scatterplot below, are thus San Antonio Spurs (SAS), Golden State Warriors (GSW), Oklahoma City Thunder (OKC) and Philadelphia 76ers (PHI).
If we choose all of the teams that are on the green in at least two plots, the visual looks like this:
These ten teams (ATL, GSW, IND, LAC, MIA, MIL, OKC, PHI, SAS and TOR) are better than the league average in at least two of the four aspects, and can thus be concluded to be good defensive teams.
For the scatterplots for analysing offensive performance, very similar statistics were chosen, but from the reverse perspective. In the upper row, the average number of points scored and field goals attempted by the team, as well as the 2 and 3-point shooting accuracies are presented. Performing well in these plots indicates that the team is able get a lot of scoring opportunities and can also convert them into points with a good percentage. The bottom row on the other hand visualizes the defensive actions that the opposing teams are able to perform against each team. The less defensive actions the opposition is able to perform against a team, the better the offence of the team can be considered to be. (Except for the Fouls, there the idea is that the good offensive teams are fouled more by the opposition)
The two teams, Cleveland Cavaliers (CLE) and Los Angeles Clippers (LAC), that are performing better than the league averages in at least three plots are highlighted in the visual below. This shows that these two teams can be considered the best offensive teams in the league, based on these aspects.
If we then again choose the teams that are on the green in at least two plots, the visual looks like this:
The group of good offensive teams can be considered to be the group of teams highlighted in the above visual. The good offensive teams would thus be: CLE, DEN, GSW, LAC, NOP, OKC, POR, SAS, TOR and WAS.
If we now compare the successful (GSW, HOU, CLE, SAS) and unsuccessful teams (SAC, LAL, NYK, PHO) from the previous blogpost to the good offensive and defensive teams, we notice that two of the successful teams are among the best in the league defensively (GSW, SAS) and one is among the best offensive teams (CLE). The exception in the group of successful teams is Houston Rockets (HOU), as they are not particularly good in either defensive of offensive aspects of the game. It is also worthwhile to note that none of the unsuccessful teams are good defensively or offensively. Thus, the only conclusion to be drawn from this visualization is that in order to succeed in the NBA, you need either good defense or good offence (or both) but without being better than most in either of the categories, it is hard to be successful in the league.