Play-by-play Event Recording

[Leftos]

Hey guys. I'm looking to take NBA Stats Tracker one step further and add play-by-play events besides keeping the box score (as well as advanced shooting (zones, kind of shot) later on). So, besides keeping the obvious...
- Quarter
- Time left in quarter
- The 5 players each team has on the floor
- Player
- Event
...is there anything else that you think I should allow users to enter? What are the events that I should be adding as a Quick Selection drop-down? Anything that affects the box score is a given, but I'm thinking is there something else that could be frequently used without having the user type it in as a custom event (e.g. technical fouls come to mind).

Of course, this will lead to advanced partial stats calculation with filters like "tell me what happens when these 3 players are on the floor together", or "tell me how many minutes these 2 players have spent together on the floor in November last year and what their performances were", etc.

Don't know how much time this will take to implement, as sooner or later I'll get my VISA and start working at 2K, but I'm still going to keep NBA Stats Tracker going as a hobby project of mine with whatever time and energy I have left.

[Patr1ck]

What events can you track? If you can track the offensive stats for a defender's assignment during the game, and assign those as extra defensive stats(similar to a pitcher's opponent batting average in baseball), that would be cool. I don't know if you can get the actual defensive assignments, but you could go position by position and couple those with multiple players or use the whole team like "what was the opponent-team's field goal percentage while these 2 defenders are on the floor" etc.

[Leftos]

Since this isn't a feature that's going to be limited by what NBA 2K's savegames offer, I can track as much information as I want, so I could add a defender parameter as well. That's a great idea, actually, so that users can keep track of, for example, per-player opponent field goal percentage, etc. And yeah, queries like the one you mentioned are totally doable. And since the events will be saved in Offender-Defender pairs where applicable, users will be able to make queries such as "what happens when Player A goes up against Player B?"

[JaoSming]

shot miss steal and block locations on a court?

[Leftos]

Hmmm. I guess I should start breaking the court down into zones and implement those before I start doing play-by-play and shot location recording. Is there an official list/guideline on court zones, or should I do the usual around the basket zones everyone uses and then break down mid-court in 6 areas (3 areas on each side of the half-court line)?

[JaoSming]

i think this is the official breakup, but this is from Live 08
http://www.nba.com/hotspots/

[Leftos]

Oh, okay, nice.

[Leftos]

First draft of Play-by-play Editor interface:

[Alpha_]

Nice

[Leftos]

Work's continuing on the Play-By-Play Tracker for NST. Will be hands-down best thing I've ever made.

[NovU]

Just checked out your vid. And... it is one sleek looking application there, Lefties. And love the functions as well. .NET framework? Didn't know you were a software developer yourself. I'm working on a similar looking application myself as well, just not basketball related unfortunately.

I guess Play-By-Play Tracker opens up the door for a lot of possibilities. Good luck!

Too bad I don't have PC 2K12/13. But still gonna give your program a try maybe tonight.

[Andrew]

Didn't know you were a software developer yourself.

Even though he's developed multiple tools for NBA 2K12 and NBA 2K13 the past couple of years?

[Leftos]

If anyone's watching the NBA Stats Tracker thread, you know that it now has Play-By-Play editing, doing complex queries based on Play-By-Play information, and Shot Charts. However, the Shot Chart Jao pointed me to over at NBA.COM (which is the one I dissected and am using in NST) only has 4 areas as far as distance, when the shot distance areas from what I gather should be
- Under the basket
- 3 to 10ft
- 10 to 16ft
- 16ft to 3pt
- Beyond 3pt

So, anyone have a shot chart base image (I just need the floor with clearly separated areas) that has all those areas separated?

[Patr1ck]

The one from nba.com isn't very schematic like, but with a little bit of measurement I added a small area around the basket without changing anything else.

[Leftos]

Thank you so much Pdub. I did a few adjustments of my own, and here's how it looks inside NST now: