JSM 2011 Online Program

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Abstract Details

Activity Number: 624
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Thursday, August 4, 2011 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
Abstract - #303146
Title: Effects of Position and Baseline Age on NBA Player Production Curves
Author(s): Aaron McGuire*+ and Garritt Page
Companies: Duke University and Duke University
Address: , , ,
Keywords: Gaussian Process regression ; NBA basketball ; NBA player production curves ; Hierarchical modeling
Abstract:

We have found that using games played or age as a dependent variable in models to estimate production curves of NBA players necessarily ignores the amount of stress a player's body undergoes when playing many more minutes than a player of comparable age and seasons played. In addition, we consider it plausible that different roles within a team framework will result in different stress intensities upon the body. In this paper, we therefore model a basketball player's on-court production in several aspects of the game as a function of minutes played to measure aging trends. A player's production on these metrics is flexibly estimated using hierarchical Gaussian Process regression. The hierarchical structure of this particular model allows us to borrow strength across players whose career paths are similar. From the results of the modeling we discuss questions regarding the relative deterioration through age of the different player positions, different player roles, and players who skipped college as opposed to players who stayed in college to graduate. Learning how minutes played and age at start of NBA career effect a players' career should prove to be useful to NBA decision makers


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