Link to our paper
This project analyzes to what extent a rookie “wall” exists in the National Basketball Association, and if it does, to whom it most affects.
The concept of a rookie wall is that first-year players in the NBA, known as “rookies” oftentimes regress about 60% of the way through the regular season. The idea is that players coming from high school, college, or other international leagues have only played seasons that are about half of the length of the NBA’s (an NCAA college season is approximately 35 games of length 40 minutes, while the NBA’s is 82 48-minute games.) Besides the astronomically large increase in number of games, the NBA’s schedule is simply more gruelling. Teams may make three or four flights a week as they travel and play games all throughout the country, not to mention back-to-back games where players often check in to their hotels at 2 AM.
At first, these rookies may thrive and relish the opportunity for something new, but as does with anybody in most anything, change can bring about struggle, and when the reality that basketball is a true job finally sets in about midway through an NBA season, it’s commonly noted that rookies hit a “wall” in their first year progression. One purpose of this project is to decide whether confirmation bias exists amongst casual NBA fans and viewers, such that people only notice the true cases and disregard the rest, or rather there is an evident trend throughout the NBA, or different groups within it.