I'm Ready To Crunch Your Funny/Random NBA Stat Questions Today So Let's Get Weird
Mark Junge. Getty Images.Trying something new today. Something hopefully fun and interactive. Because I didn't spend years learning data programming to solve the world's issues, make it a better place, or accomplish anything of worth. I did it to search for funny sports stats. If you're new to my content, I've been blogging here for over a year and get that my slant is a little niche, but hopefully this helps bring interest to what I have to offer.
The NBA regular season is now over so to celebrate the fact that we might get to see actual compelling basketball on a reliable basis I want to answer whatever funny/random/weird NBA stat lookup questions you might have. Funnier the better, but it's got to be queriable. I probably can't update the James Harden strip club thing but now that I think of it that might be a cool offseason project and I know the guy who did it. I've been hard at work behind the scenes pulling data which has been a major plan of mine since even before I blogged about it in January. To give you an idea of what I can work with I have every player box score ever - including BAA days, every advanced box score, player profile data for any of the over 5k players to step on a court, play-by-play going back to the early 2000s, and game scores.
Need some examples to get the juices flowing? No problem. I do stuff like this occaisionally on Twitter and have gotten some fun ideas. Here's a couple from the last session:
I also played around with fresh data yesterday for just a few minutes. Here's a list of players with fewer career blocks than Victor Wembanyama after his rookie season sorted by how many seasons played. Wemby has 254.
I also have a quick MVP take from a little stat mining fuckin around. Did you know Buddy Hield has played 84 games this season? Yeah, that's right. Out of a seemingly possible 82. I chirped the basketball reference account that he should have been added to the MVP odds list and judging by the fact that they deleted their post I think they have come to agree.
In case you're wondering how this is possible, Hield was traded to a team that played a couple games less in the season at the time of the trade and he evidently played in all games for both teams. All time record for most regular season games played is Walt Bellamy in 1968-69 with 88 total games. In the absolute sham of all shams, Walt did not win the MVP.
OK, your turn! Step in to the outdated meme below to add your question to the thread. Give that clown nose a little click. I'll be looking at them throughout the day and QT the ones I can do. Get creative. Obviously, I'm trying to promote amassing a bigger following for those interested, but I also get a lot of people don't do Twitter so blog comments work too. I'm a man of the people.