IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jqsprt/v8y2012i1n6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Random Walk Picture of Basketball Scoring

Author

Listed:
  • Gabel Alan

    (Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston)

  • Redner Sidney

    (Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston)

Abstract

We present evidence, based on play-by-play data from all 6087 games from the 2006/07– 2009/10 seasons of the National Basketball Association (NBA), that basketball scoring is well described by a continuous-time anti-persistent random walk. The time intervals between successive scoring events follow an exponential distribution, with essentially no memory between different scoring intervals. By including the heterogeneity of team strengths, we build a detailed computational random-walk model that accounts for a variety of statistical properties of scoring in basketball games, such as the distribution of the score difference between game opponents, the fraction of game time that one team is in the lead, the number of lead changes in each game, and the season win/loss records of each team.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabel Alan & Redner Sidney, 2012. "Random Walk Picture of Basketball Scoring," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-20, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:8:y:2012:i:1:n:6
    DOI: 10.1515/1559-0410.1416
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/1559-0410.1416
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/1559-0410.1416?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kubatko Justin & Oliver Dean & Pelton Kevin & Rosenbaum Dan T, 2007. "A Starting Point for Analyzing Basketball Statistics," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 1-24, July.
    2. Durham, Yvonne & Hirshleifer, Jack & Smith, Vernon L, 1998. "Do the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Poorer? Experimental Tests of a Model of Power," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 970-983, September.
    3. C. Sire & S. Redner, 2009. "Understanding baseball team standings and streaks," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 67(3), pages 473-481, February.
    4. Thomas Andrew C, 2007. "Inter-arrival Times of Goals in Ice Hockey," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 1-17, July.
    5. Everson Phil & Goldsmith-Pinkham Paul S, 2008. "Composite Poisson Models for Goal Scoring," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 4(2), pages 1-17, April.
    6. Arkes Jeremy & Martinez Jose, 2011. "Finally, Evidence for a Momentum Effect in the NBA," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 1-16, July.
    7. D Dyte & S R Clarke, 2000. "A ratings based Poisson model for World Cup soccer simulation," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 51(8), pages 993-998, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Song, Kai & Gao, Yiran & Shi, Jian, 2020. "Making real-time predictions for NBA basketball games by combining the historical data and bookmaker’s betting line," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 547(C).
    2. Christopher Magee & Amy Wolaver, 2023. "Crowds and the Timing of Goals and Referee Decisions1," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(6), pages 801-828, August.
    3. Tal Neiman & Yonatan Loewenstein, 2014. "Spatial Generalization in Operant Learning: Lessons from Professional Basketball," Discussion Paper Series dp665, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    4. Martín-González, Juan Manuel & de Saá Guerra, Yves & García-Manso, Juan Manuel & Arriaza, Enrique & Valverde-Estévez, Teresa, 2016. "The Poisson model limits in NBA basketball: Complexity in team sports," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 464(C), pages 182-190.
    5. Haroldo V Ribeiro & Satyam Mukherjee & Xiao Han T Zeng, 2016. "The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, March.
    6. Léo Régnier & Maxim Dolgushev & Olivier Bénichou, 2023. "Record ages of non-Markovian scale-invariant random walks," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-7, December.
    7. Song, Kai & Shi, Jian, 2020. "A gamma process based in-play prediction model for National Basketball Association games," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(2), pages 706-713.
    8. Paola Zuccolotto & Marco Sandri & Marica Manisera, 2023. "Spatial performance analysis in basketball with CART, random forest and extremely randomized trees," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(1), pages 495-519, June.
    9. Tal Neiman & Yonatan Loewenstein, 2014. "Spatial Generalization in Operant Learning: Lessons from Professional Basketball," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-8, May.
    10. Paola Zuccolotto & Marco Sandri & Marica Manisera, 2021. "Spatial Performance Indicators and Graphs in Basketball," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 156(2), pages 725-738, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leonardo Lamas & José Vitor Senatore & Gilbert Fellingham, 2020. "Two steps for scoring a point: Creating and converting opportunities in invasion team sports," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-16, October.
    2. Brian Skinner, 2012. "The Problem of Shot Selection in Basketball," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(1), pages 1-8, January.
    3. A K Suzuki & L E B Salasar & J G Leite & F Louzada-Neto, 2010. "A Bayesian approach for predicting match outcomes: The 2006 (Association) Football World Cup," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 61(10), pages 1530-1539, October.
    4. Cunniffe Nik J & Cook Alex R, 2009. "Cruel and Unusual Punishment? An Analysis of Point Deduction in European Association Football Leagues," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 5(4), pages 1-20, October.
    5. Kyung Hwan Baik & Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Abhijit Ramalingam, 2021. "Group size and matching protocol in contests," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 1716-1736, November.
    6. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    7. Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1859-1887.
    8. Klaus Abbink & Jordi Brandts, 2016. "Political autonomy and independence: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(3), pages 461-496, July.
    9. Lacomba, Juan A. & Lagos, Francisco & Reuben, Ernesto & van Winden, Frans, 2017. "Decisiveness, peace, and inequality in games of conflict," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 216-229.
    10. Arkes Jeremy & Martinez Jose, 2011. "Finally, Evidence for a Momentum Effect in the NBA," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 1-16, July.
    11. Dunia López-Pintado & Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, 2011. "On the optimal management of teams under budget constraints," Working Papers 11.11, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    12. Michael Foley & Rory Smead & Patrick Forber & Christoph Riedl, 2021. "Avoiding the bullies: The resilience of cooperation among unequals," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-18, April.
    13. Adam Smith & David Skarbek & Bart Wilson, 2012. "Anarchy, groups, and conflict: an experiment on the emergence of protective associations," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(2), pages 325-353, February.
    14. S Lessmann & M-C Sung & J E V Johnson, 2011. "Towards a methodology for measuring the true degree of efficiency in a speculative market," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(12), pages 2120-2132, December.
    15. Alexandra Baier & Loukas Balafoutas & Tarek Jaber-Lopez, 2023. "Ostracism and theft in heterogeneous groups," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(1), pages 193-222, March.
    16. Andrés Ramírez Hassan & Johnatan Cardona Jiménez, 2014. "Which team will win the 2014 FIFA World Cup? A Bayesian approach for dummies," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 10898, Universidad EAFIT.
    17. Campos-Ortiz, Francisco & Putterman, Louis & Ahn, T.K. & Balafoutas, Loukas & Batsaikhan, Mongoljin & Sutter, Matthias, 2012. "Security of Property as a Public Good: Institutions, Socio-Political Environment and Experimental Behavior in Five Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 6982, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    18. Kyung Hwan Baik & Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Abhijit Ramalingam, 2014. "Resources for Conflict: Constraint or Wealth?," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 061, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    19. Thomas Demuynck & Christian Seel & Giang Tran, 2019. "Measuring Competitiveness and Cooperativeness," Working Papers ECARES 2019-12, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    20. Klarizze Anne Puzon & Marc Willinger, 2015. "Malevolent Governance, Intra-Group Conflict and the Paradox of the Plenty: An Experiment," Games, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-11, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:8:y:2012:i:1:n:6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.