Number Heaven: Capturing Four Million Seconds of NBA Hoops

If you love basketball and statistics, check out basketballvalue.com, a trove of data on every team and player created and maintained by Aaron Barzilai ’93, the quantitative analyst for the Memphis Grizzlies—a once-ridiculed franchise that was among the NBA's best over the last two months.

The site, constantly updated, provides a snapshot in numbers of the approximately four million seconds a ball is in play during an NBA season. It provides advanced statistical analysis and the downloadable raw data (as far back as the 2005-06 season) for such analyses if you're the do-it-yourself type. Find out how the Celtics match up with the Knicks, for example, or the top five-man units playing the game.

You'll find net (on-court/off-court) ratings for overall team performance, offense, defense, and offensive and defensive rebounding as well as adjusted plus-minus (+/-) ratings—which, According to Barzilai, are "an advanced statistical approach to estimating a player’s effect on the game while controlling for the performance of his teammates and opponents."

Learn more about what Barzilai, a former varsity basketball player for MIT, does for the Grizzlies and his take on the value of plus-minus stats in this interview with ESPN.com. Or follow him on Twitter.