Welcome to the NBA Spider Graph Generator.

NBA Spider graphs are like visual box scores.

They’re a quick, visual way to compare two or more players—see examples here. A glance can give you an impression of each player’s style, and how they match up. Want to compare Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant? Done. Want to graph Dwight Howard vs. Patrick Ewing vs. Hakeem Olajuwon? Done. Want to pit LeBron James‘s 2009 MVP season against his 2010 MVP season? It’s your lucky day.

There’s more than meets the eye, too. Big men tend to have larger representation in the bottom left of the graph, while perimeter players tend to be larger in the upper right. The top half of the graph roughly represents offense, and the bottom roughly represents defense. Check out a full explanation of Spider Graphs here.

The Spider Graph Generator was built by Roger Pimentel, the founder of HTWS. The data goes back to the 1992-1993 season, so that it incorporates the entire career of every active player (Shaquille O’Neal, the oldest NBA player, having been a rookie that year).

About Manual Entry Mode

Sometimes you don’t want to compare an entire season’s worth of data—that’s why we’ve included the manual entry mode. If you have the statistics available (and stats are anything but hard to find on the interwebs), you can input them yourself to create a custom graph.

For example, you could compare two players’ performance in a single game, or throughout the playoffs. Or through their entire career. Really, whatever you want.

Feedback!

We’d love to hear any thoughts, comments, questions, or anything you have to say about the Spider Graph Generator. If there’s a way to make it better, we’ll do it. If you’ve found a bug in it, we want to know. Don’t hesitate to shoot Roger an email with whatever you have to say.

Additionally, please contact Roger if you have a need for further usage of the graphs. For standard Internet use we ask that you leave the callout in the lower right corner of each saved graph—we put a lot of work into the Generator, and would love for more and more people to know about it. If you need graphs without the callout, or if you need graphs that are high enough resolution to print, that can be arranged.