The relationship between Hometown and
Championships?By Wu Yang
Kevin Garnettborn in
South CarolinaPaul Pierce
born in
California
Ray Allenborn in
California
The 'Big Three’ in Boston Celtics
Won NBA Champion in 2008
Next:
Demo of Network Visualization
“Friendship” between hometowns(USA states)
CA
SC2
1
Node Size: number of playersEdge Width: cooperation times
Undirected Network
using Network Graphics
How about the “Friendships” among All USA states in NBA Championships history?
I make statistics of NBA play-off history from 1947 to 2013, totally 67 years!
From: http://www.basketball-reference.com
Champion Team
Player Name 1Player Name 2Player Name 3Player Name 4......Player name N
USA state 1USA state 2USA state 3USA state 4......USA state N
USA state 1USA state 2USA state 3USA state 4......USA state N
……
……
Network Graphics calculation with NodeXL
They are “friends” in championshp
total 67 champion teams
Node: USA state,total 50 nodes
Node size:The number of championship players
Edge:“Friendship”
Edge width:The cooperation times won championships
Data Visualization: Network Graphics
We could see:A few nodes are bigger than the others, and
between them The edges are more obvious!
I want to find out: the top USA states and their relationshipFiltering…1, Nodes (top USA states):
CA (California), NY (New York) and IL (Illinois)
2, Edges (relationships):Triangle and Circle relationship
Triangle
Circle
Interpretation
Point 1: Top 3 states in NBA championship history are CA (California), NY (New York) and IL (Illinois)Meaning: they own top 3 numbers of NBA players in championshipsPoint 2 (triangle):Players from these three states are always in the same team!Point 3 (circle):Players from CA are very good at winning championship by themselves