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The Pace-and-Space Revolution: How the Three-Pointer Rewired the NBA, by the Numbers
In two decades the three-pointer went from a luxury to the center of gravity of NBA offense. Here's the rewiring, charted season by season.
Numbers over noise · Est. 2026
The NBA, read through the data.
Original, data-driven NBA analysis — explainers, tutorials, and deep-dives built on public data I pull and chart myself. No invented stats, no hot takes without a table behind them.
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Free Throw Rate: The Underrated Skill of Drawing Fouls
The easiest points in basketball are the ones taken from the line. Why free throw rate is a real, repeatable skill — and one of the four factors that win games.
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Garbage Time: How It Quietly Distorts the Box Score
Stats keep counting after the game is decided. How garbage-time minutes inflate numbers and warp plus-minus — and how analysts filter them out.
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The ABA's Legacy: How a Rival League Reshaped the NBA
The three-point line, the dunk contest, and a 1976 merger. How a flashy, doomed rival permanently changed the way the NBA looks and plays.
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VORP and Win Shares: Turning Box Scores Into Wins
Replacement level, Win Shares, and VORP try to answer one question — how many wins is a player worth? How the cumulative value metrics are built, and their blind spots.
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Lineup Data and the Five-Man Unit: Reading On/Off and Net Ratings
The box score stops at the player. Lineup data asks how five-man units actually perform — and why most lineup numbers are noisier than they look.
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Legalizing the Zone: How the 2001 Defensive Rules Reshaped the NBA
In 2001 the NBA scrapped illegal defense and allowed zones — then added defensive three seconds. How the rule changes squeezed the post and opened the floor.
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Six beats, one standard: every claim traces back to a number, and every number traces back to a source.
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Stat Explainers
Plain-English breakdowns of the box-score and advanced metrics that actually matter — what each stat measures, the formula behind it, and where it misleads you.
5 articlesTutorials
Hands-on guides for pulling, cleaning, and visualizing basketball data yourself — from your first nba_api call to a finished shot chart.
5 articlesData Deep-Dives
Long-form investigations that start with a question and follow the numbers wherever they lead. No takes without a table behind them.
8 articlesBasketball History
The league's past, re-examined through modern statistics — record-setting seasons, rule changes, and trades revisited with the benefit of hindsight.
3 articlesPlayer & Team Analysis
Frameworks and case studies for evaluating players and teams: spotting real improvement, reading stat profiles, and separating signal from noise.
4 articlesMethodology & Projections
How forecasting and win-probability models are built, why they disagree, and what the data really says about predicting basketball.