Vol. 35 No. 2 (2023)
Articles

A survival analysis to discover which skills determine a higher scoring in basketball

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  • Ambra Macis,
  • Marica Manisera,
  • Paola Zuccolotto,
  • Marco Sandri
Ambra Macis
Department of Economics and Management, University of Brescia
Marica Manisera
Department of Economics and Management, University of Brescia
Paola Zuccolotto
Department of Economics and Management, University of Brescia
Marco Sandri
Big and Open Data Innovation Laboratory, University of Brescia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26398/IJAS.0035-009

Published 2023-05-23

Keywords

  • Stepwise Cox regression,
  • Lasso Cox regression,
  • Basketball analytics,
  • Performance

How to Cite

Macis, A., Manisera, M., Zuccolotto, P., & Sandri, M. (2023). A survival analysis to discover which skills determine a higher scoring in basketball. Italian Journal of Applied Statistics, 35(2). https://doi.org/10.26398/IJAS.0035-009

Copyright (c) 2023 Ambra Macis, Marica Manisera, Paola Zuccolotto, Marco Sandri

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Over the years data analytics for sports has developed consistently. Survival analysis is a method that allows to study the occurrence of a particular event during a period of follow-up. This work aims studying the main achievements associated to the probability of reaching a certain amount of points during a NBA season segment. A Stepwise Cox regression model and LASSO Cox regression were used to select the most important variables. Two settings were examined: in the first one only a 20% of censoring was admitted, while in the second one 50% of the subjects was censored, i.e. did not experience the event. It emerged that attempting more shots, gaining more achievements (double doubles) and having been selected for the All-Star game increase the probability of success, i.e. exceeding the given threshold of points. Moreover, a higher number of steals seems to decrease the probability of gaining a certain amount of points. Thus, players more involved in this fundamental are penalized in terms of gained points.

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