Who is this NBA Season’s Most Improved Player?
An Analysis Using Python and Web Scraped Data
The 2018–2019 regular season is officially over and it’s time to talk award winners.
For some reason, we will have to wait until the June 24th award show to find out the winners. I actually enjoy the award show, but waiting six weeks after the regular season ends to find out who won is too long. Fans will already have a good idea of who will win each award before then anyway, based on general sentiment and media members publicly announcing their votes (podcast, twitter, etc.).
My personal favorite award is the Most Improved Player (MIP). I enjoy watching players make significant improvements in their careers. From being no one to someone. From, “he was only good in college” to “he has arrived”. From potential bust to must watch. Especially when it’s a player that emerged from relative obscurity. Or when a player makes the leap from average to all-star. It’s an award that celebrates the culmination of hard work and opportunity.
Fans and media like to discuss this award every year, but I have always been interested to look into it further by breaking down improvements by category. Here, I will take a look at statistical improvements, who I think are the top six most improved players, who should win the award, and who will win.
Before we do that, some context. I scraped this data from realgm.com and basketballreference.com using code written in Python. All data analysis was done in Python as well. Okay, let’s go.
Minutes Per Game
An increase in minutes gives a player a greater opportunity to improve. Given more minutes, a player is naturally expected to increase his stats. However, some players have made significant improvements this season without a significant increase in minutes, a more impressive feat in my opinion, which we will get into later. For this reason, it is important to also consider a player’s stats per 36 minutes, so that comparisons are apples to apples.
Cedi is the clear winner here. Thanks to Lebron’s departure, the SF position in Cleveland was all Cedi’s. He appears most often in these MIP graphs because of this. Cedi, don’t forget to send a thank you note to Lebron.
Points Per Game
Perhaps the greatest factor in the MIP award, points are a clear and easy way to measure a player’s improvement. Derrick Rose and Pascal Siakam lead the category, improving 9.6 points per game (ppg) season over season. First, shout out to D Rose for the comeback year. He started off the season hot with an emotional career high 50 point game, but then the hype died down a bit due to nagging injuries and rest. Per 36, he improved by 6 ppg. Then we have Pascal, getting a lot of recognition already with recent appearances on the Woj and Zach Lowe podcast and one of the favorites to win the award. Spicy P is a major part of a dominant Raptors team and was an incredible fantasy basketball player this season as well, improving 6.5 ppg per 36. Notable improvements here include John Collins (7.7 per 36) and Malik Beasley (4.5 per 36). Cedi Osman and JaVale McGee don’t make the cut because despite their increase in points, per 36 they only improved by 1.9 and 1.2 ppg respectively. For this reason, they will not be considered for most improved. Finally, after winning MVP last season, Harden decided to reward himself by improving his scoring by almost 6 points per game to average 36.1, unbelievable.
Rebounds Per Game
JaVale is the obvious leader here thanks to a move from Golden State to the Lakers that gave him a 12.5 minute per game increase, however, per 36 his rebounds only increased by 2.3. Tristan Thompson broke free from the Kardashian curse with an extra 3.6 rebounds per game. Nikola Vucevic and Jarrett Allen (The Fro) also made solid improvements. Impressive to see already dominant big men like Embiid, Giannis, and Gobert make sizable increases as well.
Assists Per Game
A few things stick out to me here. De’Aaron Fox made a huge leap in his second year on a much-improved Kings team (sorry Dave Jaeger) and it certainly shows in his improved assists numbers. Second, Derrick Rose’s 2.8 more assists are another measure of his comeback season. Finally, Kyrie increased his assists by 1.8 for a career-high 6.9 assists per game. He’s had a great year on the Celtics, even if he thinks it’s bullshit.
Blocks, Steals and 3PM
I’ve consolidated these stats into one section and only included top 10 instead of top 15. JaVale McGee appears at the top again with an impressive 1.1 increase in blocks per game, but actually decreased by 0.1 blocks per 36. Montrezl Harrell hasn’t been mentioned yet but has appeared in the top 10–15 in improved points, rebounds, and blocks per game. He also has an L at the end of his name, for some reason. TJ Warren went from barely making any 3’s (0.3) to making nearly two per game (1.8).
Top Six Most Improved
After taking into account regular stats, advanced stats, all-star selection and house of highlights appearances, here are my to six most improved players, in no particular order. I’ve included their 2018 and 2019 stats as well as their improvements over these two seasons.
Making your first all-star game has a major impact on winning this award. It means you’ve become one of top 24 guys in the league. D’Angelo Russell and Nikola Vucevic are the only two players in this list that have done it. The only other first time all star this year was Ben Simmons, who should not be included in most improved since his stats are largely the same as last year.
Note: The MIP award always goes to younger players making their first big leap. It isn’t given to veterans making an improvement. Translation: Derrick Rose isn’t winning this award, despite his improvements. However, the point here is to not only explore who will win the award, but recognize those who have made the largest improvements. There is a difference.
Who do I think should win MIP?
My top three picks are D’Angelo Russell, De’Aaron Fox and Nikola Vucevic. Of those three, I think D’Angelo Russell should win it. He has improved in all regular and advanced stat categories, except blocks, and he has done so in only 4.5 more minutes per game. He became a first-time all-star and led Brooklyn to its first playoff birth since 2015. Siakam is a popular choice to win it, has improved in all categories and improved the most in points per game, but he did it in 2.5, 3 and 6 times more minutes than Russell, Fox and Vucevic, respectively. Further, he did it behind Kyle Lowry and Kawhi Leonard, unlike Vucevic and Russell who both led their teams to first-time playoff births in years.
Who will win MIP?
Based off of my analysis and from reading and listening to the media members with a vote, it’s between Russell and Siakam. Either way, hats off to both of them for making the leap forward.
Further Analysis
Looking into an increase in per minute production would be another way to compare players on an apples to apples basis, like per 36. A quick look shows that, for each player, if all stat increases are summed up and divided by the increase in minutes, Vucevic improved the most per increase in minutes by a wide margin, thanks in part to his group low 1.9 minutes per game increase. Next is Fox, Russell, Rose, Collins and somewhat surprisingly last is Siakam, due to him having the highest minutes per game increase of the group. The results are similar when you only look at per minute increase in points.
Principal component analysis and tree-based models could be run to determine feature importance in determining MIP, and weights could be added to each stat based on the level of importance.
