Alex Kane

East vs West Strength

In this project, I examined whether the NBA’s Western Conference truly has been stronger than the East in recent years, as many people have hypothesized.  To do so, I used a linear model to determine each NBA team’s average expected point differential against teams in its own conference compared to against teams in the other conference.  According to this evaluation of strength, the West has been a “stronger” conference than the East for every season except 2008-2009.

Predicting Points

This project investigates whether any team stats are good predictors of points scored.  The initial analysis showed that a combination Field Goals Made, Free Throws Made, and Three Pointers Made was very good at predicting points scored, except this result is somewhat obvious and unhelpful.  When removing all scoring variables, it appears there is some correlation between Assists and Defensive Rebounds and points scored, although there was significant error in the predictions.