NBA - Main

it’s a way to show how many points you score for every scoring attempt. it accounts for the fact that threes give you more points while not taking up extra attempts, and free throws. the formula is total points/{2[field goal attempts + (.44 * free throw attempts)]}. the 2 makes it make more intuitive sense as a percentage, makes the numbers 60% or 50% rather than 1.2 or 1. the .44 is because over larger sample size, the amount of “scoring attempts” a free throw takes up averages out to .44. if it were all 2 point fouls, it’d just be .5, but because of and-ones and technicals, where they’d be essentially 0, and 3 point fouls, where they’d essentially be .33, it brings that number down a bit. it just tries to capture the different ways a player can be more efficient. someone who goes 4/12 from the field only shot 33%, but if they also went 2/6 from 3 and 8/8 from the line, that’s 18 points on like 15.5 attempts, which is a lot better