Alright, let me tell you about this thing I was messing with back in the day – the ‘2010 2011 Bulls’ project. It wasn’t really a “project” per se, more like me nerding out and trying to figure some stuff out.
It all started because I was a huge basketball fan, still am actually. The Bulls, man, they were something else in those years. Not quite championship material like the Jordan days, but they had Derrick Rose, and he was just electrifying. I wanted to somehow… capture that feeling, you know? Not just watch the games, but do something with it.
So, first thing I did was start hoarding data. I mean, tons of it. Box scores, game logs, player stats, everything I could get my hands on. I scraped some from ESPN, some from *, and even dug up some old forum posts for more obscure stuff. It was a real mess, honestly. I didn’t really have a plan, just a vague idea of “analyzing” things.
Then came the fun part – trying to make sense of it all. I started with Excel, naturally. I’m no coding wizard or anything. I spent hours and hours just plugging numbers in, making charts, trying to see if any patterns jumped out. I was looking at things like points per game, assists, rebounds, comparing them to different opponents, home vs. away games, all that jazz.
I remember one thing that really stuck out: Rose’s performance against certain teams. He seemed to really light it up against the Lakers and the Celtics. I thought, maybe there’s something about their defensive schemes that he just exploited. I even tried to watch some game film, slow it down, look at the matchups… It was pretty amateur hour, looking back, but I was really into it.
Eventually, I got a little more ambitious. Excel was starting to feel limiting. I’d heard about this thing called “R,” which was supposed to be good for stats. So I downloaded it, fumbled around with it for a week, and managed to run a few basic regressions. I was basically just copying code from tutorials at that point, but hey, it was progress!
- I tried to build a model to predict the Bulls’ score based on opponent stats.
- I even tried to see if I could predict Rose’s MVP chances based on his early season performance.
Did any of it actually work? Honestly, not really. My “models” were probably laughably inaccurate. But I learned a ton in the process. I learned about data cleaning, data analysis, and even a little bit about programming. More importantly, I learned that even if you don’t know what you’re doing, just messing around and trying things can be really rewarding.
What’s the point?
Well, there isn’t really a “point” besides this: Don’t be afraid to just dive in and start playing around with stuff you’re interested in. You don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need to have a perfectly defined goal. Just start tinkering, and you might surprise yourself with what you discover. Plus, it’s just a fun way to spend some time, especially if you’re a basketball fanatic like me.
