So today I got this idea in my head – break down that wild 76ers vs Lakers game and figure out who really balled out. Just looking at the final score doesn’t tell the whole story, right? I wanted the nitty-gritty player stuff.
Getting Started
First thing, I needed the raw numbers. Instead of just checking box scores myself, I decided to build something. Wanted a simple way for anyone to glance at the key stats and form their own opinion.
Found a source with game stats – nothing super official, just a site that publishes data feeds. Grabbed the player data for that specific game. Man, raw data files are usually ugly as sin. This one was no different. Players listed by ID number, weird abbreviations… messy.
The Setup and the Struggle
I fired up my trusty Python setup. Always keep a simple script handy for scraping and cleaning this kind of junk data. Ran it, and… boom. Error city. The data format had changed slightly since I last used the script, of course. It’s like they rearrange the columns just to mess with me.
- Spent like 45 minutes just messing around with parsing different parts of the text file.
- Had to manually check names because the IDs made no sense to a human.
- Kept having issues with missing data points for a couple of bench players.
Finally got it cleaned up into something usable. Could see points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks – the core stuff. Now, how to make it show who played well?
Building the Breakdown
Thought about just dumping numbers into a table. But that’s boring. I wanted visual! Wrote another quick script to calculate some performance metrics. Nothing crazy advanced. Stuff like:
- Game Impact Score: My own basic mashup of key stats to give one number per player.
- Highlighted standout performances on each team.
- Looked at minutes played vs. production.
Tried a bar chart first in the script. Looked like garbage. Messed with some settings, colors… still garbage. Ended up going simpler. Focused on generating clear, focused text comparisons:
- “Embiid absolutely dominated the paint: 38 points, 12 rebounds, but only 1 assist.”
- “Harden dished out 14 assists but had a cold shooting night.”
- “LeBron efficiency machine: 28 points on only 18 shots.”
- “AD’s defense was everywhere: 19 points, 14 rebounds, 6 blocks.”
Felt like this painted a better picture than rows of numbers.
Putting it Out There
Wrapped everything up into a simple blog post format. Started with the big question: Who Played Better? Laid out the key stats and my quick observations for each star player, plus a shoutout or two for bench guys who popped. No definitive answer – that was the point! Ended by telling readers to look at the stats and decide for themselves.
Felt good to get that process down and share it. Learned the hard way (again) that data cleanup eats most of the time. The actual breakdown part was the fun payoff!
