# Which NBA rookies become stars?

An R project using first-year statistics to classify future regular players, All-Stars, and Hall of Famers.

Author: Joshua Palamuttam
Published: 2018-08-16
Type: Project
Status: Archived entry
Role: Independent college project
Period: College project
Tags: basketball, data-science, r
Canonical page: https://www.joshuapalamuttam.com/built/nba-rookie-predictions/

## Links

- [Explore the repository](https://github.com/Joshua-Palamuttam/PredictNBARookiesToHallOfFame)

I have always followed Bay Area sports, so this project began with a question I already
cared about: how much can an NBA rookie season tell us about the career that follows?

Using historical player data, I built an R model that grouped players into regular,
All-Star, and Hall of Fame outcomes from their first-year statistics. It was an early
experiment, not a scouting system, but it made model limitations tangible: rare
outcomes are hard to learn, labels hide nuance, and the most interesting careers are
often the exceptions.