This computer scientist tested himself against Kevin Durant

Ever wonder if you could do better than an NBA player? This guy actually tested himself against Kevin Durant’s NBA Finals performance.

It happens to even the most humble and rational of us. You’re watching a basketball game. You see a player hit a shot and think to yourself, “man, I’ve hit that like a 100 times in my driveway.” The La Croix starts going to your head and you wonder if maybe you could do some of the things that NBA player is doing in the best league in the world.

Well, Curtis Harris, the lead analytics engineer for Pluralsight actually put himself to the test. He tried to replicate every shot Kevin Durant took in the NBA Finals, from the exact location and and using the exact shot form. He tracked his makes and misses, took video of each shot, and built an incredible data visualization to share the results.

Obviously, Harris’ purpose here is create an interesting blend of statistical and video information to build a visualization with. The design is his focus here, not whether he could actually outdo Durant (especially since he’s not playing defense, rebounding, running up and down the court or shooting against actual opponents).

Still, it’s a fascinating project and the visualization he built is so much fun to play with. The big takeaways here are: (a) Harris could have spared J.R. Smith a lot of embarrassment and grief by putting the Cavaliers out of their misery early in Game 1, (b) Harris can make very pretty things on the Tableau software platform, and (c) those Tableau things are bit prettier than his jumper.

Next: Which WNBA players are creating the most open shots?

It would be really cool to see Harris try and recreate some other famous performances like Wilt’s 100-point game, or Kobe’s 81.