Alright, folks, gather ’round, because today I’m gonna share a little adventure I had recently, digging into the 2011 Washington Wizards roster. Now, I’m no basketball expert, but I do love a good data dive, and this one was a doozy.
It all started when I stumbled upon a random sports article online. I started thinking about all sorts of players throughout time and was curious about the Wizards’ lineup for the year 2011. I figured, “Why not try to piece together the roster myself?”
So, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. First thing I did was hit up the search engines. I started with simple stuff like “2011 Washington Wizards roster” and went from there. It was a bit overwhelming at first, with so many websites and articles popping up. I tried to make a mental note that I was looking for the regular season roster primarily. I was able to pull the regular season stats and players along with their draft stats.
- I started sifting through the most promising results, looking for official-looking sites.
- I bookmarked a few pages that seemed reliable.
- I double-checked the information across different sources to make sure it was consistent.
I was mostly able to pull the starters and bench players pretty easily. I also was able to see that Andray Blatche was selected as the #19 pick in the second round of the 2005 NBA draft. Man, that was something! I also learned that the coach at the time was Flip Saunders. What a great coach!
After gathering all the names, I started organizing them in a simple spreadsheet. Nothing fancy, just the player’s name, jersey number, position, height, and birthdate. I even added a column for their draft information, because why not? It was fun to see where these guys came from and when they started their NBA journey.
Putting it all together
Once I had my spreadsheet populated, I felt like a real sports analyst! I could see the whole team laid out in front of me, and it was pretty cool. I started noticing patterns, like which positions were stacked and which ones were a bit thin. I even learned a bit about the team’s overall performance that year, just from looking at the roster and their individual stats. One player that came up a lot in my search was Michael Jordan. I did not know that he played for the Wizards. I guess I always thought he was a part of the Chicago Bulls! Also, a fun thing that I stumbled upon was that Bilal Coulibaly will wear zero for the Washington Wizards.
It was also cool to see the stats of each player during the season. I was able to quickly cross-reference this information to get a full picture of the team during that year. I was able to learn that John Wall played point guard, Nick Young played shooting guard, and Rashard Lewis played small forward.
Overall, this little project was a fun way to learn more about basketball and data organization. It wasn’t always easy, but it was definitely rewarding. And hey, now I can impress my friends with my random knowledge of the 2011 Wizards roster!
