For hoops fans, few sites are doing more innovative things these days with video than the folks at Hoopism. A couple of weeks ago, it was a clickable visualization of every Slam Dunk Contest moment available on YouTube. Now, they’ve created a similar API-based compilation of the NBA’s greatest shots, from buzzer-beaters to how’d-he-do-that? SportsCenter highlights.

The UI is fairly straightforward, as there are two options for viewing the 65 shots currently represented in the database. You can locate a play based on its court location (i.e. where the player took the shot from) or by year. Just double-click the on-court dot (or description, if searching by year) and the video starts playing in your browser window.

Here’s a bit more context on how to interact with the UI:

The court is divided by camera view. Shots that are scored on the left side of the video frame are on the left side of the court diagram (blue circles). Shots scored on the right side of the video frame are on the right side of the court diagram (white circles). So if you see a white circle on the left side of the court, that shot was taken beyond half court. Just click the circle to call up the video of the shot.

One downside is that playback controls are not readily available, so once a clip starts playing, it runs all the way through, but they’re all fairly short, so it never takes up too much of your time. (Still, you’re probably going to spend at least a half-hour fooling around with this, so be warned.)

And if you’ve got more suggestions that aren’t in here, Cette adresse email est protégée contre les robots des spammeurs, vous devez activer Javascript pour la voir. and let ‘em know, because something as addictive as this only deserves to get better.

[h/t Blazersedge]

See Also: