I submitted the title with reference to an audio recording that is linked to on the page, having originally heard it played on the radio:

http://nationalnursesunited.org/page/-/files/audilo/iorn-rad...

Rather than linking directly to the mp3 file, I figured posting the whole article would give more context.

Yeah, the newest games are now on the wiki page linked to. I've thought about doing NBA games slightly differently -- it would be cool to see how teams change throughout the season. So order the rows chronologically (first games at the top, end of season at the bottom) and look for patterns that way (when did a team peak? did they start strong but fall off later?). Unfortunately, that loses any notion of the quality of the opponent (the "RankDiff" shown in the NCAA plot). I'd also love to incorporate individual players -- it wouldn't be too tough to include which players score (i.e. have a row for each player), or some variation like that.

The biggest difference I see between the original plot and the xkcd() one is labels! In your article, there are no labels on the axes. Thus the numbers are context-less -- providing labels (and perhaps adding text at particularly important points) is more important the actual style.

yeah, perhaps because they're from only the first two rounds of the tournament where games are more likely to be blowouts one way or another.