HoopWatcher - NBA Player Comparison Tool

Comparison tool to view players from 2000 to 2024 and find similar players based on advanced statistical data.

What it does

• Search for players by name and year.
• Display player statistics including points, assists, rebounds, steals, blocks, team, and position.
• Find and display the top 5 most similar players based on advanced statistical data.
• Show player headshots if available.

Setup

• Ensure you have JDK 11 or higher installed.
• Download and run the jar release file.

Usage

1. Select a year from the dropdown menu.
2. Enter a player name in the search field.
3. Click search to display matching players names from that year.
4. Select a player from the list to view their stats and similar players.

How are similar players found?

1. Similar players are calculated by first constructing a high dimensional vector representation of the selected player using advanced stats as components.

2. Then we calculate the cosine distance of that player against all others in a stored database. The top 5 smallest difference in players are stored and diplayed.

3. the stats used for comparisons are {avgPoints, avgMinutesPlayed, avgMadeFieldGoals, avgAttemptedFieldGoals, avgMadeThreePointFieldGoals, avgAttemptedThreePointFieldGoals, avgMadeFreeThrows, avgAttemptedFreeThrows, avgOffensiveRebounds, avgDefensiveRebounds, avgAssists, avgSteals, avgBlocks, avgTurnovers, avgPersonalFouls, trueShootingPercentage, threePointAttemptRate, freeThrowAttemptRate, offensiveReboundPercentage, defensiveReboundPercentage, totalReboundPercentage, assistPercentage, stealPercentage, blockPercentage, turnoverPercentage, usagePercentage, offensiveBoxPlusMinus, defensiveBoxPlusMinus, boxPlusMinus, valueOverReplacementPlayer, playerEfficiencyRating, winSharesPer48Minutes, offensiveWinShares, defensiveWinShares, winShares}

Resources and data

All images and data used for this project can be found in src/main/resources/com/hoopwatcher. Feel free to use them for whatever you like!