Kyrie Irving's Pre/Post Eclipse Stats Suggest - If Anything - He Might Have Suffered Slight Vitamin D Deficiency
No excuses, but it took me until 3:17am last night/this morning to get to the Brian Windhorst interview on Wednseday's Pardon My Take while I fed my six month old son a bottle he ferociously drank as if he hadn't had one since 1:06am that very night. In the interview, Brian and the boys were wishing they could get the splits on Kyrie Irving's stats pre and post solar eclipse in which the path of totality was pretty much in Dallas. Theory being that Kyrie seems to have amped it up for the playoffs.
After Brian wished the ESPN Stats and Info account would hook him up with some stats, I knew I could jump in and provide some assistance after putting the boy back to bed. So I did what any ambitious and self-respecting statistician would do. I went right the fuck back to sleep. Then I woke up and did a bunch of other necessary stuff before finding time to get around to firing up my stats machine.
And as you can see from the above heavily pixilated Microsoft One Note table that you are right to assume was made by a very tired table maker, it actually looks like - if anything - Kyrie's stats are a touch worse in most categories post-eclipse while only marginally better in the others. BTW, "effFG"?? Really? Why did I add the "ff"? Nice work tired me.
It looks like maybe Kyrie might be a little sluggish since the eclipse. I even ran some numbers by quarter and he's scored 23% of his points in the first quarter pre-eclipse and only 12.7% in the first quarter of games after the eclipse. What's to blame for this slow start in games post-totality? My guess is slight vitamin D deficiency. Or just being a father. Really feeling that possiblility at the moment.
But you know what? The dude is still balling. For whatever reason, Dallas has been his happy place and he's been playing at every bit of his potential places like Boston and Brooklyn were hoping for. While things might have seemed really flat to him during parts of his career - seems pretty clear he's come around.
Catch the interview with boys here if you haven't yet already.