Let me preface this by saying that Kyshawn George is one of my favorite players on this young team and this post is by no means a criticism or call to action, its mostly just for fun as I have way too much time on my hands.
Over the last season and half I had a sneaking suspicion that Kyshawn George played worse when he had his hair in braids. However, after being inspired by this comment by u/Ski4Prez, I did what any other reasonable person would do and spent 4 hours investigating if there actually was a noticeable drop in performance.
I used nbaplaydb.com to watch tape to see if he was wearing braids or not for each game, and then used statmuse.com to obtain the stats for each stretch of games on each hairstyle.
After, concluding my investigation I found that there was a noticeable positive difference in performance. Proving that my hypothesis was correct and that Kyshawn George does play better without braiding his hair.
The spreadsheet of my collected data can be found here.
I also tried my best at making a stats graphic.
17 comments
Idk last night he did guard kawhi and that guy did not get a shot off on him, and then after defending one of the toughest and strongest players would run down the floor and control the wizards offense as well he was also wearing braids last night
With or without braids, Kyshawn’s my favorite player out of our young players and whoever we draft this year, even if it’s AJ, Darryn, or Boozer Keyshawn will still be my favorite.
Nice quantitative analysis! Now we need the qualitative analysis that looks at what style/pattern braids he wore, and factors in why we braid our hair vs leaving it out (hint, it’s easier to manage in braids but that takes hours to get done). Also need to track home and away (I’d guess he has a standard connect for braids in DC, but on the road its hit or miss), and the other young core guys hairstyles (cause that sometimes factors in, if they all decide “we’re doing braids this week” or something).
Lastly we need to run the numbers on what McPeak does each game and compare and contrast. That might give insight into if the Wizards have someone on staff who also braids, who happens to travel with the team. I fully support all this research being done.
Impressive! This is important stuff right here (not joking).
This tells me we need to invent some Jimmy Neutron style robot that can braid and unbraid his Afro in the time it takes to get to, and leave, the free throw line.
Thank you for your service
Wow it’s the same damn stats because it’s the same player 🤯
Ah yes, the old Ben Wallace debate.
Is this a Ben Wallace situation? If memory serves, Wallace used to wear his out more at home in Detroit, and would braid it up more frequently for road trips. Again, this is from memory; I could be wrong.
I’ve been saying this, and I think Ky notices it too because part way through the season he tried the braids again and started playing bad and took them right out, Fro Kyshawn is a better look for him anyway, maybe the braids just feel lighter is why he keeps trying them
Now this is the type of advanced analytics I come here for.
You know whats crazy, I’ve had the same thoughts about Bub this season. Like he was on fire during December, had no locs and now he does and seems to be regressing a little again
The fact that the 21.7% win percentage is on the good side 😂😭
What’s the split like for this season only? He wore braids mostly last year and it was the worse season so data is a little skewed
This is the kind of analysis I’m here for
Fro Key
This is the type of analysis we need!