Alright so here’s how I went about digging into those Grizzlies vs Rockets player stats yesterday. Wanted to see who really stepped up, you know? Started simple – just pulled up the usual NBA website right after the game finished.
The Initial Grab
Opened the box score page. Easy enough, right? Scrolled down looking for the player tables. Found ’em, but the formatting… man, it was messy. Numbers all cramped together. Tried copying and pasting straight into a spreadsheet. Big mistake. Everything landed in one single column – player names, points, rebounds, all jumbled. Looked like alphabet soup. Totally useless. Sighed and closed the laptop for a minute. Needed a different plan.
Switching Gears
Remembered that sports news sites sometimes show cleaner stats tables. Hopped over to a couple of the big ones. Found one that looked promising. This time, the data was actually split into separate columns! Finally. Highlighted the whole table – Memphis players first, then Houston players. Hit copy. Jumped back to my spreadsheet and pasted it.
- Success! Mostly.
- Player names, minutes played, points, rebounds, assists… all sitting in their own little cells.
- Just had to clean up a few headers and fix one messed-up row where a player’s name got split weirdly.
Making Sense of the Numbers
Okay, now I had the raw numbers. Time to figure out what they actually meant for the game. Scanned the Grizzlies’ points column first. Saw Ja Morant popped off – 30+ points easy. Looked at assists, yeah, he was feeding people too. For Houston, checked Jalen Green’s stats. His points looked decent, but his shooting percentage… ouch. Below 40%. Not great. Then spotted someone I hadn’t thought about much – a Rockets backup guy with zero points but a bunch of rebounds. Interesting. Just shows scoring isn’t everything. Team needed those boards.
Almost There… Then My Fingers Froze
Finished looking through the main guys for both teams. Had my spreadsheet showing minutes, points, boards, dimes, steals, blocks. Thought I was done. Just needed to save it. Then I noticed… my fingers were freezing cold. Hadn’t realized how chilly the room had gotten. Forgot to turn the damn heat on again. Had to stop everything, run downstairs to fiddle with the thermostat, wait for the stupid thing to kick in. Came back, hands were stiff, and I’d lost my train of thought for a second. Seriously hate winter sometimes.
Wrapping It Up
Once I thawed out, double-checked my spreadsheet against the news site one more time to make sure I didn’t miss anything during my heat quest. Everything matched. So, final takeaways? Ja was obviously the engine for Memphis. For Houston, the starters struggled a bit efficiency-wise, but they got some hustle minutes off the bench. Saved the spreadsheet as “GrzzRcksStatsJan” or something like that. Done. Took longer than it should’ve because of the stupid cold, but got there eventually. Next time, I swear I’ll remember the heat first!
