Predicting future performance in sports is a very challenging task. With an overwhelming amount of statistics available, it can be difficult to read between the lines. For front offices, there is a balancing act between choosing the players with the highest potential/ceiling and choosing players to fill the immediate needs of the team. Maybe a team needs a strong shooter, a rim-protecting big man, or a pass-savvy point guard, but also does not want to pass up on a generation talent. Available for exploration on the demo gallery, TIBCO's NBA Draft Analysis leverages data science techniques to help analyze basketball prospects and unlock valuable insights. While this demo focuses on the sport of basketball, the same approach can be generalized to other problems with similar factors and objectives.
This dashboard compares the college statistics of 2022 NBA Draft prospects to those of modern NBA players. To make the comparisons easier, dimensionality reduction shrinks the expansive set of available basketball statistics into its most representative parts. After doing so, prospects are more understandable and similarities can be computed across all players in the dataset. Spotfire's interactive nature allows for easy selection and evaluation of players.
Taking a look at Paolo Banchero, the eventual #1 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, it is easy to see why he warranted the top selection. His college statistics are well-rounded and demonstrate top-level performance across offensive, defensive, and neutral categories. In addition, the NBA player comparisons for Banchero are quite strong. His profile closely matches that of Jayson Tatum, Luol Deng, and Tobias Harris, all of whom have had success in the NBA.
Check out some players for yourself here!
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