Querying Play By Play Data

Play By Play

Play by play data is queryable, however it is a but cumbersome at the moment. A single row in the play_by_play table contains up to three player's participation. There is a event_message_type enum foreign key to a table that acts as an enum for high level descriptions. Here are the possible play classifications:

id	string
1	FIELD_GOAL_MADE
2	FIELD_GOAL_MISSED
3	FREE_THROW
4	REBOUND
5	TURNOVER
6	FOUL
7	VIOLATION
8	SUBSTITUTION
9	TIMEOUT
10	JUMP_BALL
11	EJECTION
12	PERIOD_BEGIN
13	PERIOD_END
18	UNKNOWN

This can be used to query for specific plays. The following example is for querying for player_ids that were involved in rebound plays:

SELECT player_id1, player_id2, player_id3 FROM play_by_play
LEFT JOIN event_message_type ON play_by_play.event_msg_type = event_message_type.id
WHERE event_message_type.string = 'REBOUND'

The play_by_play table has three description fields, home_description, neutral_description, visitor_description. These can be queried using regex to get more specific information about matched plays. The nba_api documentation has a great write-up on how to do that.