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Anyone who watches basketball has been exposed to the per game metrics that are overused by the media to create rankings of different NBA Players. The overall talent and ability of the modern NBA superstar has become synonymous with statistics like points per game(PPG), rebounds per game(RPG), and assists per game(APG). This begs the question, can per game statistics that are so commonly referenced in basketball vernacular accurately represent the quality of a player's historical performances?
In this article I would like to show you why evaluating player's scoring ability based on their PPG is an outdated method that provides very little insight into their nature of their individual performances.
The Flaws of PPG
The rationale behind using a per game stat as a measure of a player's skill is that it is simple and easy to comprehend, since we as fans actually see a player score a certain number of points or grab a certain number of rebounds. However, each team in the league is different, and more than that every season in NBA history is different.
One of the main reasons that PPG is misleading is that is fails to account for a multitude of factors, including minutes played, usage rate, or pace just to name a few. This means that it is not a reliable metric for comparing players on different teams, let alone players from different eras.
To prove this let's take a look at an example of 5 different players and their respective PPGs from a season in their primes.
Player A: 28.2 PPG
Player B: 27.9 PPG
Player C: 27.2 PPG
Player D: 34.3 PPG
Player E: 26.4 PPG
Immediately looking at this list, you would think that Player D is the best scorer by far and that player E shouldn't be in the same conversation as him. It also seems as if players A, B, and C are all comparable scorers and should be viewed in the same light. However, the identity of these players reveals how far off you would be in your immediate assumptions.
Player A= Kevin Durant (2015-2016)
Player B= Kiki Vandeweghe (1983-1984)
Player C= David Thompson (1977-1978)
Player D= James Harden (2019-2020)
Player E= Steph Curry (2017-2018)
As great as David and Kiki are, no one would consider them as nearly on the same level as Kevin Durant, who's widely considered as one of the most skilled scorers in league history. While James Harden is definitely a great scorer, it would be hard to make an argument that the margin between him and 2 time MVP Steph Curry is this wide. Clearly from these examples we can see that we need to account for the main issues with the metric by factoring in the opportunities each player has to score.
Adjusting for 36 minutes
The common fix for PPG that people go to is measuring the Points Scored per 36 min(PP36min). While this does fix some of the issues with the PPG stat, it still doesn't fully account for the other major factors that we identified earlier. It does help mitigate the effects of usage rate, as players with higher usage tend to play more minutes, but it doesn't completely solve this problem. It also completely ignores the pace of the games played by each player, meaning that it still misleads people about scoring outputs.
Understanding the importance of Pace
People often misunderstand the point of basketball, believing that the time certain players are on the floor dictates the scoring output of either teams, when in reality the game is determined by the number of possessions that each player plays. To put it simply, basketball is the inverse of baseball. In one sport, you have a set number of possessions that could take up any amount of time, and in the other you have 48 minutes to get up as many shots as each team desires. The shot clock is an important part of this, as the time limit gives teams options on how they want to score in a game, opting to take either more or less time depending on the situation.
Teams play at different paces depending on the personnel and system they have. For example, teams that specialize in 3 point shooting will likely play at a faster pace than a team that looks to dominate inside the paint. An important note to consider is that there is no right way to win a game. An 88-85 victory should be treated the same as a 125-120 victory, as each are the result of a team's strategy to either take more or less time to benefit themselves over their opponent. It's also important to acknowledge that the pace that one team plays at impacts the pace at which the other team plays, as one team shooting faster only gives more possessions to the other team regardless of how slow they desire to play. This means that some players will consistently score more points in the games that they play simply because they have more opportunities, not because they are actually better scorers.
The Solution
The fix to this problem is to measure the amount of points that a player scores per possession played(PPP) or the more commonly used points scored per 100 possessions(PP100). The reason that this metric works far better than PPG or PP36min is that it accounts for the pace of play for various NBA teams and won't benefit players who's teams attempt to play as fast as possible. By measuring the PP100 of a player, we get a much more accurate representation of a player's scoring output, as we can put all of them on an equal playing field before we judge their capabilities. If we go back to our example for above and measure the PP100 of these player's, we get a result that is much more conducive to our expectations of scorers from watching player's during games.
PP100 of Players in a Single Regular Season
1. Steph Curry (2017-2018): 39.8
2. Kevin Durant (2015-2016): 39.1
3. James Harden (2019-2020): 33.5
4. Kiki Vandeweghe (1986-1987): 32.0
5. David Thompson (1977-1978):31.8
The first thing that we notice is that Steph Curry, who was last place on the original list, is now first on the PP100 ranking. This is because Steph's overall playmaking is effectively superhuman over the possessions that he is actually on the floor, and his scoring gets a huge boost by isolating through this method. We also see thatJames Harden has dropped to 3rd place, even though according to the PPG ranking he maintained a significant lead over the competition. This is because the rockets under Mike D'antoni emphasized a style of basketball where they would attempt shoot as many 3 pointers as possible during the course of a game in order to win, which overinflated the stats of their primary ball handler. Lastly, notice how Kevin Durant now has a significant lead over Kiki and David, even though all 3 of them shared relatively similar PPG. This is because Durant is a much more effective and efficient scorer than the other 2, who benefitted from a faster pace and more shot attempts.
In conclusion, PP100 appears to be a far more detailed and accurate representation of a player's scoring ability. While it is far from perfect and can ignore some of the deeper nuances and context of an individual basketball game, it gives us a much better understanding of a player's scoring production over long periods of time.
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