The Celtics are going to the NBA finals! Where have their baskets come from so far these playoffs?
I was curious, so I decided to pull their shot chart data with the nba_api python package and save a csv file. (if you've never played around with any sort of NBA analytics data yourself, look into getting yourself set up with Jupyter Lab and that package... you can pull NBA.com data into python which is wicked cool IMO)
Anyway, I imported the shot data into an Observable notebook here where I might keep working on various visualizations and update the data, but here is a fun little heatmap I made of all the makes:
Credit: Celtics 2024 Playoff shot chart by Alex Kraieski
More Celtics Content Coming!
Thanks for reading! I am working on some models and visualizations related to Tatum and Brown's 3pt shooting, among other things (thanks Joe Mazulla for making things explicitly about variance lol), so I think I will be likely have more content kind of like this coming if you find this interesting.
Let me know if the comments if you have any predictions about the NBA finals!
Join the conversation and feel free to ask any questions you may have! Please note that submitted comments may be subject to approval before appearing on the site.