This collaborative project, conducted with Jeco Cheung & Weber Lin as part of the DSO 574 course at the University of Southern California, explores the most effective strategies for leveraging partnerships between star players, such as Stephen Curry X Klay Tompson, Luka Dončić X Kyrie Irving, or Lebron X Anthony Davis, to maximize their performance and win games. To address these questions, we analyze the 2019-2020 Los Angeles Lakers, focusing specifically on the dynamic between LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Additionally, we investigate whether these partnerships provide extra benefits that enhance the performance of their teammates.
We analyze the pairing pattern and performance in each combination of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, as well as the corresponding performance of their teammates, based on every action and call of competing teams throughout the 2019-2020 NBA season. With Coach Frank Vogel’s utilization of this basketball duo, we can develop a successful on-court strategy that can be applied to other teams in the future, providing valuable information for teams considering how to build their rosters accordingly.
Key aspects of our analysis include:
- LBJ and AD's on-court percentages in a 48-minute game, along with corresponding team performance.
- What’s the Secret Recipe behind this arrangements?
- Critical Metrics Analysis (as shown below) when LBJ and AD are both on the court, only one of them is on the court, or neither of them is on the court:
- Offensive_ratings: Score per 100 Processions
- Defensive_ratings: Opponent’s Score per 100 Processions
- Net_ratings: Offensive_ratings - Defensive_ratings
- Plus/Minus: (Score(team) - Score(opp)) / team processions
- Teammate_FG%: Teammates Field Goal Percentage
- Substitutions Analysis for Lebron James and Anthony Davis
- Skills : Data Cleaning, Data Visualization, Data Analysis, Time Series
- Tools : Python (Google Colab); Canva
- Package : pandas, seaborn, matplotlib, folium, prettytable
- Source : Professor Milan Miric