Kobe Shot Predictor

Problem: Can we predict whether or not Kobe Bryant will make a shot in a particular circumstance?

Background:

Kobe Bryant made roughly 45% of the shots he took over his illustrious career. The data set from https://www.kaggle.com/c/kobe-bryant-shot-selection contains information about each of Kobe’s shots including what type of shot it was, who his opponents were, from where on the court the shot was taken, and how much time was left in the game.

Here is a heat map of the features I used in my model:

Most of Kobe’s shots were jump shots even though these are negatively correlated with make percentage. It’s simply the nature of basketball that jump shots are most commonly available.

Modeling Techniques:

I employed a variety of classification models. Here are a few of my better models:

For the full analysis and to see my notebook, check out my github page here.