The NBA Basketball Player Link Finder
Kenrick Mock
This little CGI program will find the shortest link between two players in the National Basketball Association. Players have a link of one if they played for the same team in the same year. For example, Chris Webber and Jason Williams have a link of one since they both played for the Kings in the year 2000. However, Chris Webber has a link of two to Michael Jordan - Webber played with Bill Wennington for the Kings in 1999, and Wennington played with Jordan for the Bulls in 1997.
To find the connection, select two players from the menus above and click "Find Connection."
This program is very similar to the
Kevin Bacon or the
Erdös Number game.
Note: The program only includes NBA players from 1996-2001. If I get data for older or newer teams, I will add it in, time permitting...
Fun Things to Try
- Given two players, see if you can mentally come up with the shortest link.
- See if you can find players four links apart. Remarkably, this is the maximum length link among the players! The average is about 2.
- See if you can guess who is the center of the NBA universe! This is the player with the smallest average link distance to all other players (hint, think traded a lot).
- See if you can guess who are the most un-connected of all NBA players (hint, think Bulls 2000).
- Sorted list of average link distance for all players.
Other Links
Go Kings!
Feedback: kenrick@acm.org
Last Updated 3/22/2001
Computer Science,
Department of Mathematical Sciences
University of Alaska Anchorage