APBRmetrics

[HoopTheory]

Hey, I am a new poster here but really like the looks of this site and hope to contribute in the future. I am really interested in looking at issues related to offensive shot selection, efficiency and how they relate to the players on the court and the remaining time on the shot clock. In my efforts so far I have been using Ryan's play by play data (www.basketballgeek.com). I have noticed Ryan is a poster here, so thank you very much for this wonderful aggregation service.

However, the program that I curretnly have interpreting your spreadsheets is convinced that 5% of shots are being taken after the shot clock should have expired. I can only assume this is because certain events that reset the shot clock are not recorded. I would love to either know or be able to figure out exactly how much time is on the shot clock at all times. Does anyone have any insight into sources of data that might either keep track of the shot clock for me or would allow me to more accurately infer it? Or perhaps I am misusing your data, Ryan?
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[jim]

The original play-by-play logs are sometimes incomplete, incorrect, and/or inconsistent, so I'm guessing that's the cause of the shot clock discrepancies. Ryan did an excellent job, given the quality of the data he had to work with.

[Eli W]

One problem is that after a made shot, the game clock continues to run while the shot clock doesn't start until after the ball is inbounded. So the difference between the game clock at the time the shot was made and the game clock when the other team shoots can be greater than 24 seconds.

[DJE09]

Also, shots taken at the end of the shot clock can elapse time past 24s before the clock reset. You have 24s to shoot the ball, not make a basket, this can often add a couple seconds for a three.
Having said that, I'd expect Eli's point to be the usual way to get more than 24s between shot attempts, remember teams aren't usually stopping the clock regularly until the end of the game.

When you start thinking about it - there are a lot of minor scenarios (for example ball going out off the rim), that will use up game time (from the missed/made shot attempt signalling a shot clock reset) that will not be neccessarily logged in the PbP (although, I think my example of ball going out from shot would be logged as a team rebound for the defending team, and there would be a time associated with that "team rebound).

Of course, there is also the old doozy of human error to incorporate (ie scorers starting the shot clock late...).
Perhaps if you did an analysis of this you might see a home court bias???
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Stats are only OK if they agree with what I think

[HoopTheory]