Chapter 15 Further Reading: Player Tracking Data

Key Resources

Goldsberry, K. (2019). SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA.

Summary: Accessible introduction to spatial basketball analytics with rich visualizations.

Cervone, D. et al. (2016). "A Multiresolution Stochastic Process Model for Predicting Basketball Possession Outcomes." JASA.

Summary: Academic treatment of tracking data for possession modeling.

NBA Stats - Tracking Statistics

Link: https://www.nba.com/stats/players/tracking/ Summary: Official NBA tracking statistics including speed, distance, touches.

Second Spectrum

Link: https://www.secondspectrum.com Summary: Current NBA tracking data provider.

Academic Papers

  • Franks et al. (2015) - Defensive skill measurement
  • Bornn et al. (2017) - Spatial basketball analysis
  • Wu et al. (2018) - Deep learning for tracking analysis
  1. NBA Stats tracking dashboards (familiarization)
  2. Goldsberry (2019) - accessible introduction
  3. Academic papers for methodology
  4. Proprietary team research (if accessible)