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Activité : who is the NBA GOAT ?

What is the NBA ?

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the most famous professional basketball league the world. It is located in North America and composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada).

The NBA was created on August 3, 1949. It is the result of the merger of two leagues : the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL).

Nowadays, NBA players are the world's best paid athletes by average annual salary per player.

NBA divisions

The actuel NBA is composed of 30 teams into two 15-team conferences (East and West), itself composed of three divisions with five teams each.

1. Rewrite the below table and fill it with corresponding teams of each divisions

East			West
Atlantic	Central	Southeast	Northwest	Pacific	Soutwest
...	...	...	...	...	...

2. In the previous table, count every NBA title win by division, and add it in new line at the end to highlight what is the most titled division, using the above table of every team's winnings.

Team	NBA titles
Boston Celtics	18
Los Angeles Lakers	17
Golden State Warriors	7
Chicago Bulls	6
San Antonio Spurs	5
Philadelphia Sixers	3
Detroit Pistons	3
Miami Heat	3
New York Knicks	2
Houston Rockets	2
Milwaukee Bucks	2

Team	NBA titles
Cleveland Cavaliers	1
Atlanta Hawks	1
Washington Wizards	1
Oklahoma City Thunder	1
Portland Trail Blazers	1
Dallas Mavericks	1
Baltimore Bullets	1
Sacramento Kings	1
Toronto Raptors	1
Denver Nuggets	1

The most titled players

Here is the table of the most titled NBA players in the history.

1. How many players do you know in the above list, having won more than 6 titles ?

2. As a consequence of it, does the number of titles is enough to estimate the value of a player ?

Criteria to assess the value of a player's career

In order to have a better vision of who could be the best player of all time, we have chosen a list of criterias as follows:

• titles

• statistics

• accomplishments

• longevity

Assessment of the GOAT

We want to assess who is the best player between Michael Jordan and Lebron James.

To do such assessment, we will use the four criterias expressed in the previous point. It's up to you to determine which is the best coefficient to apply to any of these criterias.

For each criteria, you can as well determine inner coefficients for each sub-criterias.

All these marks will give you a score, allowing you to compare both players at the end of the study.

1. Titles

Choose a coefficient for the importance of winning a title, and apply it to each players's number of titles. You can apply some additive coefficient if you estimate that it was more difficult to win a title at a certain period in comparison to another.

Player	NBA titles	Sequence
Lebron James	4	2012-2020
Michael Jordan	6	1991-1998

2. Statistics

In the same way, affect coefficients to any of these sub-criterias, according to their respective importance. For negative statistics, you can apply a negative value.

Player	Points	Assists	Rebounds	Blocks	Steals	Turnovers	Fields goals %	3pt %
Michael Jordan	32 292	5 633	6 672	893	2 514	2 924	49.7%	32.7%
Lebron James	40 4741	11 009	11 185	1 111	2 275	5 211	50.6%	34.8%

1 : Lebron James is the best scorer of all time. It can considered as a bonus in the calculus.

3. Accomplishments

In addition to NBA titles, let us now observe what are both players' career accomplishments in seasons.

Once again, repeat the same process by affecting coefficients, and compute a corresponding score for each player.

Player	Regular season MVP	Finals MVP	Scoring leader	Assists leader	Steals leader	Minutes leader	Best defensive player	All-star selections	All-star MVP
Michael Jordan	5	6	10	0	3	2	1	14	3
Lebron James	4	4	1	1	0	3	6	20	3

4. Longevity

Last but not least, a predominant criteria in a player's career is his longevity.

Determine what is the importance of this criteria and calculate the matching score.

Player	Period 1	Period 2	Period 3	Period 4
Michael Jordan	Chicago Bulls (1984-1993)	Chicago Bulls (1995-1998)	Washington Wizards (2001-2003)
Lebron James	Cleveland Cavaliers (2003-2010)	Miami Heat (2010-2014)	Cleveland Cavaliers (2014-2018)	Los Angeles Lakers (2018-present)

5. Final score

Finally, add all these scores together to obtain a final mark for both players.

Player	Final mark
Michael Jordan	__________
Lebron James	__________

You will probably find that it is Michael Jordan...