So I had this idea after watching some Taiwan basketball highlights – wanted to see Dwight Howard’s stats clearly without drowning in spreadsheets. Figured charts would work best. Here’s how I wrestled with it:
Starting from Scratch
First I needed his actual numbers. Scoured basketball forums and box scores like some detective work. Took forever cause stats were scattered everywhere:
- Points per game hiding in different articles
- Rebound totals buried in Twitter threads
- Shot attempts mashed up with team stats
Copy-pasted all this crap into a messy text file. Felt like doing homework nobody assigned me.
The Spreadsheet Struggle
Opened Excel like a champ… then immediately regretted it. Messed up the columns three times trying to organize:
- Dumped dates in one column
- Shoved points in the next
- Force-fed rebounds after that
Highlighted the whole block nervously… clicked “Insert Chart” like crossing fingers. Got this garbled monster graph. Points looked like mountains, rebounds looked like tiny anthills. Useless.
Simplify Mode Activated
Trashed that hot mess. Started over by just focusing on POINTS and REBOUNDS – nothing else. Made two separate charts cause my brain can’t handle combo views:
Rebounds First: Picked a basic bar chart style. Each bar shows Dwight swallowing boards each game. Bam! Instantly see that 30-rebound monster game towering over others.
Points Second: Used a simple line chart this time. That line hops up and down like crazy – shows where he popped off for big buckets vs quieter nights. So clear even my cat could get it.
Took like four coffee refills and two spreadsheet tantrums, but finally got those clean visuals. Now you glance at one picture and immediately know how he dominated the boards or when he went off scoring. No number-crunching required. Mission accomplished.
