Determination of basketball types with grey analysis

Pattern recognition techniques have been widely used in many areas such as engineering, science, medicine, management, education, etc. However, they are seldom utilized in sport science. This paper is an inter-discipline study applying pattern recognition technology in sport area where a grey analysis technique is utilized to classify the types of basketball teams. We first introduce the procedure of grey analysis and some background on basketball. We conduct an experiment to classify basketball teams into three types including Center-scoring, 3-pointer-scoring, and Defense-oriented. In the experiment, fourteen basketball statistic items are used as the attributes for the grey analysis. We use the team statistics from a regional college league in Taiwan as samples. Eighteen universities and colleges are involved in the experiment. The target sequence of the grey analysis is established by interviewing a college basketball coach. The results of the experiment can be used as the information for basketball coaches to help them make their defense and/or offensive strategies.