Academia Following graduate school, Goldsberry served as an assistant professor of geography at
Michigan State (2007–2013) and a visiting professor at
Harvard (2011–2013). At Harvard, Goldsberry designed and co-taught the first Geography course offered since Harvard eliminated Geography in the 1940s. In 2012, Goldsberry presented a paper at the
MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference entitled
CourtVision: New Visual and Spatial Analytics for the NBA. Within the paper, Goldsberry introduced a new method for making shot charts using NBA shooting data, and suggested that the amount of areas from which a player successfully attempts field goals, or
Range%, could contribute to the analysis of a given player's shooting ability.
ESPN and Grantland During his time at
ESPN and
Grantland (2012–2015), Goldsberry achieved prominence by integrating his shot charts with analytical breakdowns of NBA players. His work appeared regularly at
Grantland,
FiveThirtyEight, and other ESPN outlets. Among his most cited pieces are
The Kobe Assist,
The Evolution of King James, and
DataBall. Goldsberry leveraged his background as a cartographer to analyze and present spatial basketball data to readers in novel ways. He used his personal experience playing basketball, where his strengths and weaknesses varied depending on his location on the court, and figured that it also applied to other players.
Return to writing In 2019, Goldsberry published
SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA, which focuses on the inefficiency of shots in basketball taken between the
restricted circle and the
three-point line. ==Publications==