I would like to program software to analyze NBA games.  I intend to
determine certain values, such as the actual point value of an assist
and other eccentric data like for example, the Denver Nugget's
three-point percentage when visitng Madison Square Garden in April. 
--My question is this:  Where can I obtain such statistical data in
electronic form and are there limits to its use?

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 04 Apr 2003 01:25 PST

I wonder how far in history would you like the statistics to go. Maybe
up to 1997, or as far as say 1985 or even 1975?

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Clarification of Question by hamstrung-ga on 04 Apr 2003 21:53 PST

j_phil:  Thanks for your work.  The paper on NBA software was
precisely what I'm talking about -- The player's data and yearly data
as available on NBA.com is available all over the web, but I want
time-data  --Note in my question, the "third quarter" part?  Also, as
mentioned, I'm looking for the limits of it's use.  I want game data
broken down along a time-axis.  In short, I want that software,
"Advanced Scout"!

Can anyone provide more information about Advanced Scout?

Hello Hamstrung,

These two pages contain statistical data:

NBA.com Statistics
http://www.nba.com/statistics/index.html
(Note the light-blue sub-navigation to the left, as well as the
select-boxes on top of the statistics.)

NBA Statistics archive
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketba/skn/statarch.htm


Following page contains a PDF document which should be of great
additional interest to you:

Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery in NBA Data
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/bhandari97advanced.html
"Advanced Scout is a PC-based data mining application used by National
Basketball Association (NBA) coaching staffs to discover interesting
patterns in basketball game data. We describe Advanced Scout software
from the perspective of data mining and knowledge discovery. This
paper highlights the pre-processing of raw data that the program
performs, describes the data mining aspects of the software and how
the interpretation of patterns supports the process of knowledge
discovery"


I'm sure you're looking for a single download file (or a collection of
downloads) in some kind of database format, and will post this
information as a comment only. Good luck with your program!


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nba statistical data download