A Tale of Two Seasons
How a data visualisation of an English soccer team inspired me to explore a German art style using data from American basketball.
While scrolling through LinkedIn earlier this week I came across a post from Jennifer Dawes about a recent update to the Tableau Data Art Gallery. There was one particular piece of art that caught my eye – a visualisation of match data for Walthamstow FC, a semi-professional English soccer club, created by Mo Wootten.
In his visualisation, Wootten presents match-by-match data over two recent seasons for Walthamstow FC, where the game type (home or away) and outcome (win, loss, or draw) are represented by different shapes or colours.
The visualisation is presented in an attempted Bauhaus style, which, according to the internet, is:
“A German artistic movement… [whose] goal was to merge all artistic mediums into one unified approach, that of combining an individual’s artistry with mass production and function. Bauhaus design is often abstract, angular, and geometric, with little ornamentation.”
And while I’m certainly no artist, I think Wootten is pretty spot on with his visualisation.
Seeing this visualisation inspired me to attempt one of my own, and for the purposes of this exercise I’ve chosen to look at two of the most successful seasons in NBA history: the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls and the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors.
The NBA in the 1990s was dominated by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. After losing to the Detroit Pistons in the 1989-90 Eastern Conference Finals, the Bulls went back-to-back-to-back in the 1990-91, 1991-92, and 1992-93 seasons.
Jordan retired ahead of the 1993-94 season, but the Bulls, now led by Scottie Pippen, still made it to the Conference Semifinals, losing to the New York Knicks in seven games. He returned to the team towards the end of the 1994-95 season, but the Bulls again lost in the Conference Semifinals – this time to the Orlando Magic in six games.
Chicago completely dominated the 1995-96 season, blitzing their way to a 72-10 record on the back of winning their first 37 games at home and 18 consecutive wins between December 29 1995 and February 4 1996. It was the first time a team had won more than 70 games in a season (the previous record was held by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers, who went 69-13).
The Bulls were almost perfect in the playoffs that season, beating the Miami Heat in the first round (3-0), the Knicks in the Semifinals (4-1), the Orlando Magic in the Conference Finals (4-0), and the Seattle Supersonics in the NBA Finals (4-2) to win their fourth championship.
This championship was the first of the Bulls’ second threepeat, with the team going 69-13 in the 1996-97 season and 62-20 in the “Last Dance” season in 1998-99 before beating the Utah Jazz in consecutive finals series.
Chicago’s record of 72 wins in the regular season would stand for 20 years, until the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors came along. The Warriors entered that season as defending champions, having defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers in six games the year before.
The Warriors burst out of the blocks, winning 29 of their first 30 games under interim head coach Luke Walton while Steve Kerr (who played with Jordan in the Bulls’ second threepeat) was recovering from back surgery – including their first 24 games (the best start in NBA history).
Golden State would continue their strong form once Kerr returned, becoming the first team in NBA history not to lose back-to-back games in the regular season – and the first team to not lose to the same team twice throughout the regular season – on their way to a 72-10 record.
After getting through the first two rounds of the playoffs with relative ease, beating both the Houston Rockets and the Portland Trail Blazers in five games, the Warriors ran into much stiffer competition against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals.
Golden State went 1-3 in the first four games before rallying in the final three, with their 120-111, 108-101, and 96-88 wins making them just the tenth team to win a seven-game playoff series after being in such a deficit.
However, fate would swing the other way when the Warriors faced off against the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals for the second straight year (the two teams would also face off in the NBA Finals in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons).
The Warriors won three of the first four games and were playing game five at home, putting them in the perfect position to defend their championship title. However, they lost that game (97-112) and game six in Cleveland (101-115) to return to the west coast with the ledger squared at 3-3.
The seventh and final game of the series was closer than the preceding six, but Golden State ultimately fell short (89-93), becoming the 11th team in NBA history to lose a series – and the first team to lose a Finals series – after having a 3-1 lead. The defeat to Cleveland was only the fourth time a team had lost game seven in the NBA Finals on their home court.
The timeframe of this stat is limited based on what data are freely/easily available and/or accessible. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you spot any errors in what I have presented.