nba_final

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“NBA Player Performance Analysis”

author: “Sneha Agrawal”

Main Objective

Explore if playoff participation impacts player performance (GmSc)

Examine whether total rebounds relate to points scored (PTS)

Audience

NBA Coaches & Analysts

Fantasy Basketball Players

Sports Fans & Stat Enthusiasts

#Initial EDA – Boxplot

Game Score (GmSc) by Playoff Participation

library(readr)
library(ggplot2)


nba_data <- read_csv("C:/Statistics/nba.csv")

Rows: 1703 Columns: 19
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr   (4): bbrID, Tm, Opp, Season
dbl  (12): TRB, AST, STL, BLK, PTS, GmSc, Year, GameIndex, GmScMovingZ, GmSc...
lgl   (1): Playoffs
date  (2): Date, Date2

ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

ggplot(nba_data, aes(x = factor(Playoffs), y = GmSc, fill = factor(Playoffs))) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  labs(title = "Game Score (GmSc) Distribution by Playoff Status",
       x = "Playoff Participation (0 = No, 1 = Yes)",
       y = "Game Score (GmSc)") +
  theme_minimal()

Playoff players show higher and more varied Game Scores.

##Scatter Plot – Rebounds vs Points

Correlation Between Total Rebounds (TRB) and Points Scored (PTS)

ggplot(nba_data, aes(x = TRB, y = PTS)) +
  geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +
  geom_smooth(method = "lm", col = "blue") +
  labs(title = "Correlation Between Total Rebounds and Points Scored",
       x = "Total Rebounds (TRB)",
       y = "Points Scored (PTS)") +
  theme_minimal()

`geom_smooth()` using formula = 'y ~ x'

#Weak but statistically significant correlation (r ≈ 0.091, p = 0.000161)

#Hypothesis Test: GmSc

H₀: No difference in GmSc between playoff and non-playoff playersH₁: There is a significant difference

p-value < 0.05 → Reject H₀

✅ Playoff participation correlates with higher performance

#Interpretation – Correlation

Pearson r = 0.091 → weak positive correlation

p = 0.000161 → statistically significant

Players with more rebounds tend to score slightly more points

#Conclusions

Playoff players have higher Game Scores

Rebounding has a weak but significant impact on scoring

Actionable Insight: Prioritize playoff experience and multi-metric evaluation