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I think it's visually ok but kind of hard to follow other than in the abstract. Mousing over players names is basically a crapshoot.

But, it gives the overall sense of the data. It's a bit more style over substance.

As to how it's made, looks like a simple canvas animation.

I mean, it needs to be sped up, but if you sped it up, made mouse overs more informative, it can be a fast way to express large data sets.

I run a simulated football game, visualizations like this can be helpful over large datasets.

It's fun, but slow. And a little frivolous since it could just be a table.

Couldn't most visualizations just be a table unless the row count is too high?

Edit: This is one possible strategy that used to be employed to progressively enhance table into info graphics or data vis. Proposing a table as the best solution seems needlessly reductionist.

I mispoke, there's the rank dimension, which would make this a big table. Still I think the animation took too long to settle, I was bored waiting and annoyance didn't add enough value to final infographic for me. It would be more justifiable if datapoints/balls dropped with the time axis since there'a might be an interesting story there that would warrant animation.