THe NBA has existed for 67 years. Basketball is one of the most popular sports in the world and continues to rise. While the rules and fundamentals have remain the same, the game has dramatically evolved, and the players with it. In this presentation I will be looking at the correlation between the average players height and weight through time.
I gathered my data from The Hoops Geek (https://www.thehoopsgeek.com/average-nba-height/) .
year<-c(1952,1956,1960,1964,1968,1972,1976,1980,1984,1988,1992,1996,2000,2004,2008,2012,2016)
avgnbaheight<-c(76.1,77.1,77.3,77.7,77.8,77.8,78.1,78.4,78.8,79.1,78.7,78.8,78.8,79.1,78.9,78.9,79)
avgnbaweight<-c(194,198,202,205,205,204,202,202,205,208,207,211,214,218,219,221,219)
dat<-as.data.frame(cbind(year,avgnbaheight,avgnbaheight))
cor(avgnbaheight,avgnbaweight)[1] 0.8105598
While this is a very strong correlation, let’s visually look at the data and see exactly why it’s not completely linked.
Being a very avid fan of basketball, I am able to understand the graph pretty well.At first when the league was introduced, that’s when players were at their smallest, standing at arounf 6’4. Once the league was around for 10 years, more competition came up and soon players started getting taller and bigger, so they were differentiating themselves by getting in better shape to outrun them and get the pace of the offense up. After another few years, the merger of the two leagues of the ABA and NBA in 1976 we notice our first biggest difference in height and weight. The next ten years not only does this relationship stay parrallel with each other, but it shot straight up with more players getting taller and staying in shape to create these giants of 6’7 on the court. This takes us to 1988, where we have the tallest average players in history who are running like crazy in good shape. This is the era right before Michael Jordan became Jordan in the league.From that year we don’t see much difference in height, with the average player plateauing at about 6’7. Yet from 1992 to 2004 we see players starting to gain weight again, this is coming from players now being in great shape to not only run the court but now being big and strong enough to bully in the paint and play tough basketball too. From 2004, the era beginning with LeBron James, we see him as a prime example that players are not only skilled and intelligent basketball players, but are some of the most well rounded athletes in the world.
This graph is a great representation of how dynamic the game has changed, as well as an explanation as to why the players were playing in different styles in different times. An 80% correlation is definitely a great representation of how players had to change to compete at the highest level of the game.