Development History
I wrote the first line of code for Basketball GM back in 2008, after I had graduated from college but before I started grad school. That code was C#, which I had never used before. My primary goal was to learn a new programming language and learn how to make traditional desktop GUI software, as previously I had only made software with either command line or web UIs. I was not sure if I was a good enough programmer to complete such an ambitious project, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
Welcome to the Basketball GM Blog!
Welcome to the Basketball GM Blog! The main purpose of this blog is to write about the development of Basketball GM, a free online single-player basketball management simulation game. Additionally, there will be some other basketball-related posts here from time to time, such as the two posts below this one. Those are old posts from my personal blog that I decided fit better here, so I moved them. Also, it's nice to start a blog with at least a little content already posted, right?
The effect of a blocked jump shot on future jump shots in the NBA
If an NBA player gets a jump shot blocked, does it change the way he plays the rest of the game? You can imagine there could be a psychological effect like a loss of confidence, or a conscious/subconscious decision to try harder to avoid being blocked again which could harm shooting efficiency. Basketball statistics legend Dean Oliver recently Tweeted the claim that it has a big effect on Steph Curry and basketball players in general. But is it actually true? And how big is the effect? Let's look at some data.
The correlation between spending and winning in the NBA: trends by year and by team
Money is the topic of the moment in the NBA, what with the unfortunate lockout and all. One relevant question is how much the budgets of different teams affect their abilities to win. The Lakers and Knicks, in the two biggest markets, can spend pretty much anything and still turn a profit. The Grizzlies and the Bobcats, not so much.
But how does spending correlate with winning for NBA teams?