Kobe Bryant Tribute
This piece was created after Kobe Bryant tragically passed away in January 2020. A small tribute from a big fan to an extraordinary basketball player, father and legend.
The goal of this piece was to highlight just how amazing Kobe’s career was and why he was so much better than the rest. I was able to get most of this information from nba.com/stats where all data about all players is public.
To start, I had to go through all the data and do some preliminary analysis in Excel to average out NBA stats and Kobe’s stats to see what kind of story I could tell. I created some preliminary charts in Excel to visualize the data and it didn’t take long to figure out that I could build a pretty strong case.
Once I had an idea of which stats I wanted to use, I started sketching some ideas of how to showcase it. I knew Tableau was going to be my medium and I knew it was going to be a dashboard. These are some of the initial ideas I had.
I also created a design system to figure out the style, colours and text that I wanted to use for the piece. It did morph a little bit once I started creating it but it’s always great to have a base to work off of.
These are some of the various ideas that I went through in Tableau. The original “Ranked Above the Rest” section didn’t convey the message I was trying to get across so I incorporated some new stats to try to develop the story further.
After testing a few different ideas and continual refinement, I developed a short story about an amazing 20 year NBA career. Even though it doesn’t capture what Kobe did for so many off the court, it does give a glimpse into his legacy.
You can also find the project on Tableau Public.
