Who's The Most Efficient?
Scoring has gone up again throughout the NBA, but which player is the best when given the opportunity?
(Thanks NBC Sports for the photo)
Anyone who watches the NBA regularly knows that scoring numbers have gone up each of the last 10 seasons. If you look at the league leaders (stats are as of games played before February 24th, 2023), six players average over 30 points per game, and three others (LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant) score 29 points per game.
To put these scoring averages in perspective, there has only been one season in NBA history when the top five scorers averaged more than 30 points per game, and that was in 1961-62. That season, Wilt Chamberlain, Walt Bellamy, Bob Pettit, Oscar Robertson, and Jerry West averaged over 30 points per game, and Richie Guerin averaged a career-high 29.5 points per game.
But sometimes players who score a lot of points per game aren’t always the most efficient. When you take a deeper look under the hood, you will find some really interesting stats about player efficiency.
So how can you measure efficiency?
Our friends at Synergy Sports have an enormous range of statistics and data that can allow you to figure out how efficient players are. So, let’s dive into them.
With the NBA turning into a game where most shots either happen in the paint or from beyond the arc, no one shot is the same. So, using the statistic of field goal percentage doesn’t tell the complete story because a two-foot shot is much easier to make than a three-pointer. A three-pointer might be an easier shot unless you are Stephen Curry.
Because Curry and others take large numbers of threes, an effective field goal percentage stat was created. This stat was created to adjust for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal. This will allow all shots to be measured equally. So this stat was used in the calculation.
A sizable proportion of basketball fans despise the stat known as points per 36 or 48 minutes. It’s a stat that allows you to measure if each player plays the same number of minutes per game. Then this is what their stats would look like. This is why Boban Marjanovic has become an analytics superstar.
When he's on the court, Marjanovic puts up impressive numbers in a relatively short amount of time per game. For example, in the 2018–19 season, he averaged 7.3 points and 4.6 rebounds per game in 11.7 minutes played. Over 36 minutes, he would have averaged 22.3 points and 14 rebounds a game. Boban has only played more than 30 minutes in a game three times in his entire career.
Since we will not be using that metric, two other metrics will be used that provide some very meaningful data as well. Points per possession and points per shot are two very good indicators of efficacy when it comes to players. In this instance, a player has "possession" when he does something that affects the offensive game. In this case, either a shot, a foul (shooting or non-shooting), or a turnover The "Points Per Shot" is pretty self-explanatory—the number of points you score per the number of shots that you take.
Who Made The Top Ten?
To get an accurate measure of the top 10, I had to set some rules. I had to exclude players who did not have as many possessions as others to get a true reading of them. So I used players that had at least 650 possessions this season, which would lead to right around 10–11 possessions per game depending on the number of games you have played. This allowed 106 eligible players, which is around one-fourth of the number of players in the league currently.
So by taking each of the three metrics listed above (Effective Field Goal Percentage, Points Per Possession, and Points Per Shot) and giving them the same level of value and importance, here are your top 10.
After looking at the data, here is what I found:
Six All-Stars were in the top 10.
A really interesting balance of players who do different things
Some residents of the painted district (Allen and Williamson)
Big men that can step out and shoot (Jokic, Turner, Wood, and Sabonis)
Extremely efficient ones (Markkanen and Gordon)
Some of the elite scorers (Curry and Durant)
Jokic and Allen top this list because they are in the top-3 in the entire league in all three of the categories used, and Jokic has attempted 112 three-point shots in the process. Aaron Gordon is shooting close to 40% from beyond the arc and has an effective shooting percentage of 63. Curry has taken the most threes on this list (433), but since he has hit 42.7% of those shots, it has given him a 12% difference between his effective field goal percentage (61.9) and his field goal percentage (49.5).
Both Lauri Markkanen and Miles Turner have shooting percentages of over 60 percent on the effective side, over 40 percent from beyond the arc with over 85 three-pointers made. Christian Wood is not far behind both of those players, shooting 59.8 percent on the effective side and hitting 84 three-pointers at a 37.8 percent rate.
Kevin Durant and Zion Williamson round out the top 10 because they are just elite at being efficient every time they touch the ball.
How is this possible? None of the top six scorers are on the list.
Yes, I understand it might surprise some, and this could lead to the "Analytics doesn’t watch basketball" crowd getting into a complete uproar. But guys like Jayson Tatum (ranked 55th), Luka Doncic (ranked 29th), and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (ranked 64th) have over 1600 total points this season, but they also have taken over 1000 shots and have had over 1500 possessions this year. Those types of numbers will lower your points per possession and points per shot. Only Gilgeous-Alexander is in the top 25 in points per possession, and he’s ranked 23rd.
To go even further on this, if you look at another stat called Scoring Percentage (which is the chance a player will score), it will further drive home this list. Among the players listed in the top 10, six of them are rated higher than Gilgeous-Alexander (who is ranked 11th), eight of them are ahead of Doncic (who is ranked 22nd), and nine out of the 10 are ahead of Tatum (who is ranked 36th).
Here is the rest of the Top-20:
11. Deandre Ayton- Phoenix Suns
12. Buddy Hield- Indiana Pacers
13. Kevin Huerter- Sacramento Kings
14. Brook Lopez- Milwaukee Bucks
15. Malcolm Brogdon- Boston Celtics
16. Tyrese Haliburton- Indiana Pacers
17. Nikola Vucevic- Chicago Bulls
18. Norman Powell- Los Angeles Clippers
19. Alperen Şengün- Houston Rockets
20. Bradley Beal- Washington Wizards
We still have around 20 games left in the season, so there is plenty of time for your favorite player to get into the top 10 by the end of the season.