LeBron James and Stephen Curry
LeBron James and Stephen Curry
NBA Playoffs DataDive LeBron James and Stephen Curry What makes these superstars so extraordinary?
[The comic consists of several plots and tables, listed here from top to bottom, left to right.]
Scatter plot of Social Security number vs Free throw percentage [Social Security numbers range from 000-00-0000 to 999-99-9999. No pattern discernable, aside from points being a bit denser in the middle of the plot. Stephen Curry is marked as a point on the right edge of the plot, corresponding to a high free throw percentage.]
Scatter plot of 2018 points per game vs Average teammate APGAR score [APGAR scores range from 0 to 10. Pattern suggests a somewhat positive link between the two factors. LeBron James is marked as having a lot of points, but a low teammate APGAR score of approximately 2.1.]
Shot map [Legend: grey dot for all players, black dot for Stephen Curry] [A diagram of a basketball court is shown with dots placed where players have taken shots at the goal. For the all players category the dots generally cluster next to the goal basket and in front of the three point line. Stephen has 3 dots next to the basket (one is behind it), but does cluster next to the three point line. He also has several dots on the other side of the playing field, and outside it, including three in the bleachers and one in the locker room.]
Sandwiches eaten during play vs Win % [Sandwiches eaten range from 0 to 4. A plot that suggests no relation between the factors because practically all dots are in the zero sandwiches column. 2018 Warriors have one dot at around 60% and 4 sandwiches.]
2018 total points [A table listing teams and their points overall and "When net is within 15° of magnetic north". The rows for the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers are highlighted, the latter showing an abnormally high score in the magnetic north column.]
2018 total points Overall When net is within 15° of magnetic north Golden State Warriors 9304 330 Houston Rockets 9213 268 New Orleans Pelicans 9161 219 Toronto Raptors 9156 341 Cleveland Cavaliers 9091 1644 Denver Nuggets 9020 280
[A table at the bottom:]
Stephen Curry LeBron James Have you heard of him Probably Yes President during most recent game 7 loss Obama Bush Pog collection Large Staggeringly large Career average Fed interest rate 3.42% 4.41% Name Scrabble score 22 22 Best sport Basketball Basketball Height Over 6' Over 6' Retirement year 2027 Unknown Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight total rating (devised by Nate Silver to combine all metrics into a single stat) 37.4 31.8 86.6
This comic was posted the day after the second game in the 2018 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors (Stephen Curry's team) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (LeBron James' team).  It is the fourth consecutive time the two teams faced each other at the finals, which is unprecedented in major sports leagues in North America.  The Warriors won in 2015 and 2017, the Cavaliers won in 2016. At the time of the comic, the Warriors led the current series 2-0; which they eventually won.

At the time of this comic, the 2018 NBA Finals were going on, between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors with the Warriors leading 2 games to 0 in a best of seven series. At first glance, the comic looks like an in-depth analysis of two of the star players on those teams, LeBron James and Stephen Curry . The joke is that while comprehensive, all the statistics are completely meaningless - many of them are obviously false, and many don't show any correlation, and if there is one, it's extremely unlikely there is any causal link in there.
The first graph includes a nine-digit Social Security number issued for US citizens which is typically not considered a metric related to athletic ability. As Social Security numbers are essentially random numbers ( until 2011 , there was a geographic correspondence for the first three digits), the graph shows only the free throw percentage of a large number of players, artificially spread vertically. Also note that Social Security numbers are not usually made public, barring security leaks.
The second graph is a graph of 2018 points per game vs teammate's APGAR score. APGAR score is used to quickly summarize the health of newborn children, with scores of 7 and above indicating an infant has generally normal health; its use to rank adult NBA players is odd, if not improper. This graph indicates LeBron's teammates have an average APGAR score of approximately 2.1. Scores of 3 and below are generally regarded as critically low and possibly requiring medical attention. Low APGAR scores can also be associated with increased risk of neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy. The joke appears to be in giving LeBron's less-than-impressive teammates a low APGAR score.
The shot map shows from what position Curry's shots were scored compared to other NBA players. This references Stephen Curry's propensity to take (and make) shots from well beyond the normal distance required for 3 points. [1] The comic then takes this to hilarious extremes by showing he supposedly scored several times from outside the playing field (not a legal play), including twice from the bleachers ( definitely not a legal play), and once from the locker room (which is physically impossible due to multiple walls in between [ citation needed ] ).
Next is a graph of (team) win percentage vs sandwiches eaten during play. Average win percentage seems to go down as number of sandwiches eaten goes up to 3. It does indicate that the Golden State Warriors still have quite high win rate even though they have eaten either 4 sandwiches per game, or 4 sandwiches total during games, over the course of the 2018 season (the graph is unclear on this point). Golden State Warriors seem to be an outlier as their win percentage is much higher than the one of the teams that have eaten 2-3 sandwiches.
In the "2018 total points" table, the highlighted Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers represent the teams of Stephen Curry and LeBron James respectively. Magnetic north is the south pole of the Earth's magnetic field . Certain animals use the magnetic field to navigate and align themselves (including migratory birds, bees, and foxes), but there is no evidence that humans are affected by the earth's magnetic field. This means that there should not be any correlation between orientation of a basketball court and points scored. But Cleveland Cavaliers have a much a higher percentage of goals scored when orientation is towards magnetic North than other teams, probably it is implied that LeBron James and/or his team somehow actually senses magnetic field and uses that to direct shots, but more likely explanation would be that it is just the orientation of the court during their home games.
The title text is a continuation of the joke in the bottom table. FiveThirtyEight , sometimes referred to as 538, is a website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging.
The table at the bottom includes more unrelated comparisons:
Have You Heard of Him Although both players are well known in their native United States, elsewhere basketball is considered a minority sport. Of the 7 billion people in the world it is likely that less than 2% [ dubious ] of the total population will have heard of either player. [ citation needed ] According to Randall, LeBron James is a more well known player than Stephen Curry. President During Most Recent Game 7 Loss In the NBA, the top 16 teams qualify for a single elimination play-off to determine the season champion, with each series played as a best-of-seven series (first to win 4 games). After the fourth game, fixtures are only played as required. Most fixtures are therefore resolved before the last game. Lebron James has participated in seven playoff game 7s in his career (winning 5 of 7), and the last time his team lost a game seven was on May 18, 2008 ( George W. Bush was still President). This also highlights that James is an older athlete, yet has been fairly dominant through his career. Stephen Curry's last game 7 loss came at the hands of Lebron James in the 2016 NBA Finals ( Barack Obama was President). It is notable that both the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers won their respective games 7 in their Conference Finals to make it to this year's NBA Finals. Pog Collection Pogs were a fad in the 1990s. It is unclear why either would have a large collection of them, or why LeBron's collection would be even more "staggeringly large" than Curry's, besides being 4 years older than him.
Career Average Fed Interest Rate The Federal Interest Rate, or federal funds rate , is an interest rate set by the United States Federal Reserve . This rate is increased or decreased periodically based on the health of the U.S. economy. As of the time of publishing, the federal interest rate was targeted at 1.75%. The rate has fluctuated from a high of around 5% to a low of near 0% (during the time of the 2008 recession ). James' career average federal interest rate is higher than Curry's, because James began his career before Curry, when interest rates were higher. Name Scrabble Score Both "lebronjames" and "stephencurry" are worth 22 points in Scrabble . However, proper names are not recognized as scorable words in Scrabble, and thus would be worth nothing. Best Sport It is claimed that their best sport is basketball. This fact should be exceedingly obvious, as they are arguably the two greatest current basketball players; considering all the work they would have dedicated to reach that point, it is extremely unlikely that they have reached an even greater level of mastery in any other sport. Height Both are listed as over 6 feet tall, which is not at all unusual for professional basketball players. Stephen Curry is 6'3" and LeBron James is 6'8", although this chart does not distinguish the exact heights. In most contexts, bucketing humans into broad height-groups would be unsurprising, but in basketball more detail is relevant. Thus, the information is accurate but uninformative --- like the rest of the data in this comic. Retirement Year In 2027, Stephen Curry will be 39 years old, which is a typical retirement age for NBA players. LeBron James's retirement age is listed as Unknown . In reality, there is no way to know when either will return, and if Curry's retirement date is just a projection or prediction, it is unclear why the same could not be done for LeBron (it could perhaps refer to James's high level of play through his mid-30s, when typical players have a decline in their performance). FiveThirtyEight Total Rating Nate Silver is a political commentator and founder of the website FiveThirtyEight , which uses and promotes statistical approaches in explaining the world.  The site's two major areas of focus are in politics (especially on elections - it became famous for correctly predicting for whom 49 of 50 states would vote in the 2008 US presidential election and every US state in the 2012 election, and though it wasn't as accurate in 2016 it had given Donald Trump a larger chance of Electoral College victory than other mainstream media sources) and sports (Silver first got into statistical analysis via baseball). The presence of both sports-related and politics-related topics in the comic, however related they are (or not) with each other, seems to be a nod towards FiveThirtyEight's content. Nate Silver has a much higher 538TR than either Curry or James. As explained in the title text, the 538TR combines basketball skill (either real-life or video game basketball) with election forecasting. This could suggest that Silver is proficient at basketball, presumably the video game kind, or else that election forecasting is heavily weighted.
NBA Playoffs DataDive LeBron James and Stephen Curry What makes these superstars so extraordinary?
[The comic consists of several plots and tables, listed here from top to bottom, left to right.]
Scatter plot of Social Security number vs Free throw percentage [Social Security numbers range from 000-00-0000 to 999-99-9999. No pattern discernable, aside from points being a bit denser in the middle of the plot. Stephen Curry is marked as a point on the right edge of the plot, corresponding to a high free throw percentage.]
Scatter plot of 2018 points per game vs Average teammate APGAR score [APGAR scores range from 0 to 10. Pattern suggests a somewhat positive link between the two factors. LeBron James is marked as having a lot of points, but a low teammate APGAR score of approximately 2.1.]
Shot map [Legend: grey dot for all players, black dot for Stephen Curry] [A diagram of a basketball court is shown with dots placed where players have taken shots at the goal. For the all players category the dots generally cluster next to the goal basket and in front of the three point line. Stephen has 3 dots next to the basket (one is behind it), but does cluster next to the three point line. He also has several dots on the other side of the playing field, and outside it, including three in the bleachers and one in the locker room.]
Sandwiches eaten during play vs Win % [Sandwiches eaten range from 0 to 4. A plot that suggests no relation between the factors because practically all dots are in the zero sandwiches column. 2018 Warriors have one dot at around 60% and 4 sandwiches.]
2018 total points [A table listing teams and their points overall and "When net is within 15° of magnetic north". The rows for the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers are highlighted, the latter showing an abnormally high score in the magnetic north column.]
2018 total points Overall When net is within 15° of magnetic north Golden State Warriors 9304 330 Houston Rockets 9213 268 New Orleans Pelicans 9161 219 Toronto Raptors 9156 341 Cleveland Cavaliers 9091 1644 Denver Nuggets 9020 280
[A table at the bottom:]
Stephen Curry LeBron James Have you heard of him Probably Yes President during most recent game 7 loss Obama Bush Pog collection Large Staggeringly large Career average Fed interest rate 3.42% 4.41% Name Scrabble score 22 22 Best sport Basketball Basketball Height Over 6' Over 6' Retirement year 2027 Unknown Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight total rating (devised by Nate Silver to combine all metrics into a single stat) 37.4 31.8 86.6
This comic was posted the day after the second game in the 2018 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors (Stephen Curry's team) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (LeBron James' team).  It is the fourth consecutive time the two teams faced each other at the finals, which is unprecedented in major sports leagues in North America.  The Warriors won in 2015 and 2017, the Cavaliers won in 2016. At the time of the comic, the Warriors led the current series 2-0; which they eventually won.
