Site News

This is a rather major site announcement, which I'll quickly announce and then get into what it means.

Jordan Sams from LibertyBallers of the SBNation network has made an offer for me to join LibertyBallers, which I've accepted.

What does this mean for PhillyArena ?

Since I'll now be covering the Sixers for LibertyBallers, this means I will no longer be writing articles here, at PhillyArena. This was a hard decision to come to, as PhillyArena has been my personal pet project, and it's always tough to leave your baby. That being said, I do believe it's the right choice.

But PhillyArena's not going to die.

My primary purpose for starting this site was for two things:
1) To scratch an itch I have for website/database development.
2) To develop statistical tools that I felt were lacking and create a comprehensive 76ers resource.

Articles and news posts will not be made on this site anymore, outside of announcements for new features. For that, please visit LibertyBallers. I will, however, continue to maintain the stats database, and will be looking to add many new features, and expand on the ones I already have developed (such as the Searchable Rotations and Searchable Stats).

What does this mean for you?

Nothing. I'm still going to be writing for about the Sixers (in fact, if anything this should help me do a better job of covering the team), and these statistical tools are still going to remain online.

I'd like to thank you all for reading my rants and ramblings over the previous month, and hope you follow me over to LibertyBallers. Thanks!

The Rotational Data is now up-to-date with all games entered. I've got a lot of added features I've been working on this that I'm not quite ready to debut, but they should be available shortly. Thanks for waiting.

Two quick updates:

• The Last Games page's teamstats are now sortable. For example, previously it defaulted to sorting by minutes per game. Now you can click on the rebounding column header under Player Stats and order by who has rebounded the best.
  
• I've brought the forums under the main site template to help improve navigation. head on over there and spark up a conversation.
  

Working on a lot of new site features that I'll hopefully be introducing in the coming few weeks.

Just a quick addition I made tonight. On the boxscore it displays the advanced stats (Four Factors, if you will), showing the results for that game, the Sixers averages for the year, and the league averages. I've also now included the opponents average (up to the point of the game). So this way you can say "ah, the Sixers held the Blazers to 45.2% eFG%, which is under their yearly mark of 49.5%", getting all that information right form this site. Right now that data's only been entered for the Blazers game. I'll go back and fill in that data for the previous games later today.

I'm excited to announce a new feature I've spent quite a bit of time working on the last 2 weeks, rotational data and searches. What can you do with this?

First, rotations are displayed in box scores, as well as +/- data. So, on each games boxscore it will display the players +/- figure for that game (similar to yahoo and nba.com), and on the bottom of the boxscore it will list all of the rotations. What time they came in, what time they left, the score when they came in and left, the lineup, and the +/- for that rotation.

Perhaps more importantly is the ability to search rotations to find out +/- and per48 minute production for lineups. Want to see how the team does with Andre Igudoala at the 4 ? Now one quick search away. Want to see how the Elton Brand/Jason Smith combination perform? Can find that as well. It will display a log of all the rotations, give you a link so you can provide a link to that search, and on the bottom list the overall productivity of that lineup.

I have a lot of features that I want to add to this (i.e. the ability to exclude players, so you can say "give me rotations where Iguodala and Jason Smith are playing, but Samuel Dalembert is on the bench. The ability to hide the log and only view the results. Showing the results when the lineup doesn't match the requested). These features will come with time. This is simply a start. Feel free to let me know any features you'd like to see.

Example Searches:

Original Starting lineup

With Jrue/Willie Green

With Jrue/Jason Smith

With Thad at the 3

With Thad at the 4.

I've done some more work on the advanced stats portion of the site again.

First, boxscores now include not only the advanced stats for that game, but also the seasonal averages for the Sixers/Opponent and league averages for the year, so that you can easily compare the Sixers performance from the norms.

Second, the gamelog is now searchable. What this means is you can see the Sixers record/performance when they win/lose any number of the four factors. So, if you wanted to see the Sixers record when they win the shooting and rebounding battle you can (it's only happened twice, 2-0). You could select any combination of categories, for example seeing the sixers record when they win the shooting battle is 4-0.

I have three more features I'd like to add to the 4 factors/advanced stats:

• Sortable. I.e. sort all the games based on eFG%.
  
• Random categories. By this I mean to be able to say "give me the Sixers record when they win at least 2 of the 4 factors. Right now you would have to specify which of the two four factors they would win. I want to add the ability to say "if they win any of the 2 four factors", which is currently impossible.
  
• Allow searches based on values. Currently you can only search the 4 factors based on whether the Sixers won or lost. Eventually you'll be able to say "give me the Sixers record when their eFG% is greater than 51%".
  

Any other things features you'd like to see (both related to the advanced stats and not)? let me know.

This site has, up to this point, been a Philadelphia Sports blog, with emphasis on the 76ers and Phillies. From this point forward I'm going to cut it back and make it a 76ers only resource.

There are many reasons for doing this. First, while I'm a huge Phillies fan (and season ticket holder), I'm more plugged into the Sixers. From my work with DraftExpress to the contacts I've made at RealGM, I'm much deeper entrenched into the inner workings of the 76ers world than I am Phillies.

Second, my goal isn't to make this site a blog. My goal is to make it a resource, that also contains articles you would see on a blog. All of the development work I've been doing so far has been basketball focused, and I've only touched the surface. There's still such a vast amount of features I want to add to the Sixers section I can't even begin to start worrying about adding statistical features to the Phillies section. I'd rather do one portion well than both half you-know-what.

Finally, as I'm filling out more and more of the features on the site, I want to get back in the habit of providing daily, in-depth content in the form of articles. This goes back to the previous comment in that I would rather focus on one sport and do it well than try to spread myself thin.

You can still read some of my baseball musings over at baseball.realgm.com.

(oh, expect some college basketball commentary as well, but I'll tie that in with the Sixers in the form of draft preview).

I did a little maintenance on the Advanced Stats section of the site (Dean Olivers "Four Factors", along with a few others).

First, I've added oRTG and dRTG (offensive rating and defensive rating) to the advanced stats gamelog.

Second, I added the advanced stats to each boxscore. So, in the boxscore, you not only get the traditional stats for that game, but you also then get eFG%, offensive rebound %, free throw rate, turnover % and offensive rating for each team (as well as the differential).

Example:


Or you could go view a boxscore to see what I mean.

Next up: Searchable advanced stats (i.e. give me the Sixers record when they win rebounding and fg%).

Added a second table of Per 40 minute production to the player stats page.

Right now it's no frills, just the Sixers salary information. In short order I plan on adding features, such as estimated draft pick cost added in each year, the total on the bottom to include the minimum amount guaranteed (i.e. all options declined/not picked up), as well as minimum # guaranteed that the sixers control (i.e. only removing what the Sixers can remove themselves, and keeping in player options for the total).

You can view player salaries either from individual player pages or from the Team Salaries Page. I'll update once more features are added.

After seeing Brian at DepressedFan talk about it recently, and seeing it on Hoopdata, I decided it would be best to add this extremely useful information to the site, in the form of a game by game log.

What is Four Factors? Dean Oliver identified the 4 attributes successful basketball teams exhibit. Shooting, Turnovers, Rebounding, and Free throws (weighted in that order). Do better than the opposition in those categories, and you stand a good chance of winning.

The Four Factors are statistics to try to identify "winning" in these categories. A full explanation of the statistics can be found here.

The page by default shows up as a game by game log, with the year averages on the bottom. Click on Home/Road to view only home or road games of these stats (Eventually this will display the home/road average splits). Click on a teams short name and it will show only games against those teams. Each of the four factors will have the Sixers production in that category, the opponents, and the differential.

Any suggestions? Let me know and I'll look to get them added.

Sixers Opponents now have team pages. For example:
Boston Team Page.

Some of the things that are shown here:
- Previous games results
- What upcoming games are left
- How the team has done against Boston (compared to how they did in other games)
- How individual players have done against Boston (it's not pretty, nobody's averaged over 15 ppg).
- How Boston's players have done in games against us

The boxscores are now also display-able, player stats are available, and the schedule's updated. Go to nba.phillyarena.com for all the current Sixers features.

As always, some of the layout on the page is liable to change, and I hope to add more shortly.

A new, fairly minor feature. This allows you to view the team and player stats for the last number of games.

For example, you can go here to view the stats for the 4 game losing streak.

For team stats, it shows you the team stats for the last X games, then compares it to the stats for the rest of the season.

View Last Played Games Feature.

Pardon the lack of polish, as this isn't really finished, but I figured I'd announce it and people can use it if they're interested.

I've setup a system where you can search through the games, and get the Sixers record + team statistics for when that condition is met. For example, if I wanted to get the Sixers record when Thaddeus Young scores 22 or more points, I could find out it's 10-4. Or, I could quickly figure out the Sixers are 14-4 when they make 6 or more three pointers. Or see the Sixers splits when Elton Brand does/does not play. There are tons of possibilities, so knock yourself out.

This will likely undergo some changes, but the basic functionality is up. Expect much more in terms of stats/tools coming up in the near future. I've been a little lax in posting news/opinions on the site the past week or two, primarily because what spare time I did have to devote to the site has been spent working on the backend system for this. Now with the framework in place, additional features should come quickly.

Any problems/suggestions please let me know.