Sweep Sports Analytics

05/01/2023

Here's a stats breakdown and comparison behind why Nikola Jokic deserves the MVP award and why Lauri Markkanen deserved the MIP award.

https://sweepsportsanalytics.com/2023/04/15/2022-23-nba-awards-why-jokic-should-be-mvp-and-why-markkanen-deserved-the-mip-award/

If you ask me, the Joker deserves to win it – for the third time in a row. It’s not a fun storyline, but I think it’s true. Nikola Jokic has been the most VALUABLE player this season. He ranks 1st in nine categories, 2nd in four, and 3rd in four, i.e. top 3 in 17 categories! What I find to be the most important stat categories are the Player Efficiency Rating (PER), True Shooting Percentage (TS%), and Win Shares. He’s currently the favorite to win the title, with over 50% chance.

On April 23, 2023, Lauri Markkanen was awakened at 2 AM while serving the Finnish military to receive his award. The first Jazz player in history to win it, his all-around improvement was really impressive.

12/07/2022

Almost a third of the regular season has passed and there are some clear trends. Fenerbahce leads the way, all four 2022 Final 4 teams are playoff-bound, and four teams are just one win behind the payoff spots. A few questions are torturing my mind: will Panathinaikos continue their impressive run? Can Olympiacos recover from their slump? Will coaches Messina and Obradovic turn around the negative records that Armani and Partizan have?

Reading Time: 5 minutes Almost a third of the regular season has passed and there are some clear trends. Fenerbahce leads the wa...

07/31/2022

This is a web scraping tutorial using R programming. We get data from the beloved fbref.com for Manchester City, the English Premier League 2021-22 champions.

https://sweepsportsanalytics.com/2022/07/31/soccer-analytics-tutorial-scraping-epl-data-using-r-2022-update/

Reading Time: 10 minutes This is an update to last year's web scraping tutorial. I focus on getting data from my beloved fbref.c...

07/15/2022

The Loss Angeles Lakers: A Modern Tragedy - An In Depth Analysis Using Python

Reading Time: 2 minutes Note by Bill, Sweep Sports Analytics: This is a great interesting analysis that Angel Maldonado asked to...

05/19/2022

The moment we’ve all been waiting for is here. The 2022 EuroLeague Final Four is set to start in Belgrade. Barcelona, Olympiacos, Anadolu Efes, and Real Madrid will be battling for the prestigious EuroLeague trophy.

A lot has been said and written about the Final Four. What I want to add is an analytics view for Barcelona’s game against Real Madrid.

Regular season leaders Barcelona had a stressful series against Bayern Munich, with coach Trinchieri managing to lock down stars Nick Calathes and MVP Nikola Mirotic.

Spanish rivals Real Madrid, on the other hand, swept Maccabi. Many players performed better than they did during the regular season: Sergio Llull, Causeur, Hanga, Poirier, and Williams-Goss all stepped up.

Real Madrid is the team with the best defensive rating in the whole EuroLeague season. Offensively they have been just above average.

Barcelona has been amazing at both ends of the court. The Spanish side was the only team besides Olympiacos within the top four teams in the league – 3rd in offense and 4th in defense.

Barcelona is 1st in terms of offensive eG% among the whole league. Real Madrid is just 6th.

In terms of defensive eG%, Barcelona is 1st and Real Madrid is 2nd. Could this turn out to be a defensive battle?

Check out the full article!
https://sweepsportsanalytics.com/2022/05/19/2022-euroleague-final-four-barcelona-vs-real-madrid-analytics-preview/

05/19/2022

The moment we’ve all been waiting for is here. The EuroLeague Final Four is set to start in Belgrade. Barcelona, Olympiacos, Anadolu Efes, and Real Madrid will be battling for the prestigious EuroLeague trophy.

A lot has been said and written about the Final Four. What I want to add is an analytics view for Olympiacos’ game against Anadolu Efes.

I dare to say that Olympiacos really shows heart this season. Players such as Kostas Sloukas, Thomas Walkup, and Hassan Martin stepped up and overachieved in the playoff series against Monaco.

On the other side, in the playoffs Anadolu Efes played as champions to overcome Armani Milano 3-1 and reach the Final Four, with Tibor Pleiss playing better than expected. Vasilije Micic fell into negative PIR territory, despite an increase in his average points.

The reigning champions Anadolu Efes is the team with the best offensive rating in the whole EuroLeague season. Olympiacos‘ offense was the 4th best among all EuroLeague teams and is 3rd among the Final Four teams.

Olympiacos has been amazing at both ends of the court. The Greek side was the only team besides Barcelona within the top four teams in the league – 4th in offense and 3rd in defense. Anadolu Efes barely managed to finish the season with an average defensive rating thanks to their strong run in their last games. Which team will show up in the semifinal?

Check out the full article!
https://sweepsportsanalytics.com/2022/05/19/2022-euroleague-final-four-olympiacos-vs-anadolu-efes-analytics-preview/

04/03/2022

The EuroLeague playoff picture is still being defined. We know all 8 teams who will battle it out. What remains to be seen are the matchups. Who will be unlucky enough to square off against Barcelona’s incredible offense? Which of the top 4 teams will be unlucky enough to face the reigning champs, Anadolu Efes? Will Olympiacos’ amazing regular season performances take them to the Final Four in Belgrade?

I’m not the one to ask for predictions.

But I am the one to ask to present an advanced stats view.

A graphical representation of stats helps paint a better picture. Whether you’re a EuroLeague fan or a basketball analytics enthusiast, this is for you!

https://sweepsportsanalytics.com/2022/04/03/basketball-analytics-euroleague-2021-22-rounds-1-33-ratings-four-factors-shot-preference/

03/11/2022

With cost of top tier relievers in baseball sky rocketing (LHP Aroldis Chapman signed a 3 year / $48mil contract with the New York Yankees and RHP Liam Hendriks signed a 3 yr/ $54mil contract with the Chicago White Sox) MLB front offices appear to acknowledge the necessity of quality relievers.

The White Sox were able to dish out so much money to Liam Hendricks knowing they had a steal coming by signing the 558th pick in the 2014 draft LHP Aaron Bummer to a 5 year / $16 million contract.

Aaron Bummer's 121 ERA+ indicates that he was 21% better than the average pitcher. I believe that number is only going to get bigger.

Why is he so hard to hit? The Sinker and The Slider.

Check out the full article!

Reading Time: 6 minutes The White Sox knew they had a steal coming by signing LHP Aaron Bummer to a 5 year / $16 million contrac...

02/12/2022

Another big title fight tops the UFC main card!

Israel Adesanya, the undisputed middleweight champion, will defend his belt against the former champ Robert Whittaker. Leading up to the title fight, we will see Derrick Lewis face Tai Tuivasa in a bout between two heavyweight knockout masters. Before that, middleweights Jared Cannonier and Derek Brunson face off.

If you’ve landed here, you probably already know what’s set for Saturday’s UFC event. What I want to add is a view of advanced stats and fight strategy for three of the fights. All stats below and in the charts refer to data from the fighters’ UFC fights.

Reading Time: 5 minutes Israel Adesanya, the undisputed middleweight champion, will defend his belt against the former champ Rob...

01/22/2022

The UFC is BACK for the first 2022 event with two title fights!

Are you as excited as I am about the Ngannou vs Gane title unification bout?

I can’t wait to see who will be considered the baddest man on the planet after Saturday night! This might be one of the best ever heavyweight fights in history, and it includes an interesting back story as well.

What I want to add is a view of advanced stats and fight strategy for three of the fights. All stats below and in the charts refer to data from the fighters’ UFC fights.

https://sweepsportsanalytics.com/2022/01/22/mma-advanced-stats-ufc-270-preview/

01/05/2022

Short Answer: No. At least not yet....

To validate his claim, I tried crunching the numbers. What I did first is have a look at the shooting data since 1996.

12/19/2021

It’s time for another basketball analytics tutorial! This is for beginners and intermediate sports analytics enthusiasts. I will show you how to extract and prepare NBA data from basketball-reference.com and create a graph with a player’s career stats.

https://sweepsportsanalytics.com/2021/12/19/nba-analytics-tutorial-using-r-to-display-player-career-stats/

Use RStudio to retrieve, prepare, and visualize NBA player stats with this detailed tutorial. For beginners and intermediate level analysts.