Ballernoi

What am I looking at?

15 pixels = 1 foot

What can I do?

Average speed (mph)

Time Frame

Data is from the 2015-2016 NBA season - more recent data is kept private by Second Spectrum, the NBA's current partner for player tracking. Note that players' wingspans or defensive awareness have not been taken into account, nor offensive players being obstacles to the defensive players' movements.

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Welcome to Ballernoi! This is a visualization of an NBA defense - each image represents an individual player on a team. The basketball court that you see has been split up into a Voronoi tessellation, regions that are the set of points on the court that are closest to each player relative to their teammates. The borders of the region are the points that are equidistant from two or more players - the points on defense that may lead to the most confusion between players.

Each player also has a range of coverage, based on their average speed and represented by the gradient around them. Areas that are bluer (or areas not covered at all) will take longer for players to get to.

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CLICK a player on the court to look at the player's statistics.
EDIT their speed manually or search through a list of NBA players.
DRAG the players around to see how their coverage changes.
SLIDE the time slider to show the distance covered within that time frame.

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