The relationship between Hometown and

Championships?By Wu Yang

Kevin Garnettborn in

South CarolinaPaul Pierce

born in

California

Ray Allenborn in

California

The 'Big Three’ in Boston Celtics

Won NBA Champion in 2008

Next:

Demo of Network Visualization

“Friendship” between hometowns(USA states)

CA

SC2

1

Node Size: number of playersEdge Width: cooperation times

Undirected Network

using Network Graphics

How about the “Friendships” among All USA states in NBA Championships history?

I make statistics of NBA play-off history from 1947 to 2013, totally 67 years!

From: http://www.basketball-reference.com

Champion Team

Player Name 1Player Name 2Player Name 3Player Name 4......Player name N

USA state 1USA state 2USA state 3USA state 4......USA state N

USA state 1USA state 2USA state 3USA state 4......USA state N

……

……

Network Graphics calculation with NodeXL

They are “friends” in championshp

total 67 champion teams

Node: USA state,total 50 nodes

Node size:The number of championship players

Edge:“Friendship”

Edge width:The cooperation times won championships

Data Visualization: Network Graphics

We could see:A few nodes are bigger than the others, and

between them The edges are more obvious!

I want to find out: the top USA states and their relationshipFiltering…1, Nodes (top USA states):

CA (California), NY (New York) and IL (Illinois)

2, Edges (relationships):Triangle and Circle relationship

Triangle

Circle

Interpretation

Point 1: Top 3 states in NBA championship history are CA (California), NY (New York) and IL (Illinois)Meaning: they own top 3 numbers of NBA players in championshipsPoint 2 (triangle):Players from these three states are always in the same team!Point 3 (circle):Players from CA are very good at winning championship by themselves