Mental statistics?

Concept mapping the behavior of basketball players through on-court performance

Goktug Islamoglu, Ege Demirel, Tolga Serin, and Batuhan Gorgulu
Sports executives and statisticians perceive sports psychology to be a difficult concept to quantify in
contrast to on-court performance analytics, rendering the works of sports psychologists who dont have hard
data dubious. Notwithstanding these sentiments, studies on individual behavior in sports have been able
to gain prominence in the past years. To name a few, player momentum, motivation levels, and perfectionist
strivings have been explored in depth by sports psychologists. Despite these advances, sports psychology
research is met with skepticism due to the applicability of the results.
In this breath, easily interpretable results in out-of-lab scenarios should be the main objective of any
research. In our endeavor to identify the mental performance of basketball players, we make use of oncourt performance of NBA players, and draw a concept map that connects common behavioral patterns to
predefined mental attributes.
Drive
Finesse
Toughness
Effort
Dependability
Positioning
Awareness
Tenacity

Drive
.
PTS
FTA
FGA

Finesse
PTS
.

Toughness
FTA

Effort
FGA

Dependability

Positioning

AST

3PA

TO
.

REB

.
.
TO
REB

AST
3PA

PF

Tenacity

OREB

MIN
PF

.
BLK

OREB
MIN

Awareness

BLK
.
STL

STL
.

In this paper, we construct the framework for a proposed mental map of player performance. We employ
a player-game design in our dataset that is parsed from basketball-reference.com database, starting from
the 1980/81 season. Using NBA games as our data generating source, we define eight mental stats (drive,
finesse, toughness, effort, dependability, positioning, awareness, and tenacity) that are derived from box
score statistics for our analysis. Utilizing the data, we extract these attributes of players relative to the
competition. With controls for season and position-specific averages, home/away and playoff performances,
extraneous factors such as aging and injuries, we are able to construct a profile that enables us to evaluate
the players mental characteristics.

For the purposes of demonstration, we present a head-to-head comparison of mental stats of four players
between the 2010/11 and 2013/14 seasons in Figure 1. The fitted mental stats in the graph illustrate how the
on-court behavior of players may be predictable from their past performances. This demonstration reflects
how Durant excels at creating his own shots through his resolve, yet fails when his ball-handling abilities are
exposed. Such analyses are extendable to team rosters and scout reports, and opens possibilities for player
improvement and coaching. Ultimately, this approach provides an analytics tool for team management that
can be easily adopted.
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