Since as long as I've known Jordan Makin, he's maintained that big market superstars get more calls than small market normal players.
Based on the #nbaplayoff visualization below, it's clear that all-stars do draw more fouls on the whole, yet it doesn't seem to correlate to the team's market size or win-loss record.
Here is a look at how incentivized the NBA, it's partners and teams, and advertising money is to try and extend series to 7 games.
My takeaway: 7 games series are more common when they are more lucrative. But because each round increases the likelihood of parity between the teams, financial incentive can hardly indict the NBA in pushing series to 7 through officiating.
Yet the incentive is there, and for 24.2 Million dollars, its hard not to think there is some systematic pressure to extend. Interesting to think about.
I wanted to explore the relationship between NBA media market size and overall playoff success.
There has long been a trope that big market teams get more talent because of their fiscal advantage over small market teams, and that NBA favors big market teams because of that fiscal incentive.
Based on these visualizations, this is just not true. In fact, I think these make a good argument that small market teams actually do slightly better on the whole than their big market counterparts.
I wanted to break down NBA success by region.
The traditional way of seeing teams successes was based solely on players would explain playoff success. But does that city as a market have an appeal that draws the superstars? Do small market teams compete as often as large market teams? Does the media money from the bigger cities increase chances of post-season success?
I expanded my basketball visualization to include BYU, Utah, USU, WSU, and UVU. Here are the respective team charts and a companion graph with all teams. In the last decade, there has been a lot of parity in the Wasatch Front.
