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ELI5 TS% please (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by peanutburger@alien.top to c/nba@nba.space

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I’m a dinosaur and only know OG stats. I’ve sorted hated these manufactured stats but am open to change. I understand conceptually what it is (more or less) but not how it’s calculated or how it’s not sorta arbitrary. I’m not convinced it’s better especially when they say AI is overrated. Dude was a beast.

And are there other new stats I need to learn?

ELI5 but also open to complexity.

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[–] junkit33@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html#ts_pct

Good page for reference on most modern stats.

I’m not convinced it’s better especially when they say AI is overrated. Dude was a beast.

It's highly debatable how much importance efficiency should be given. In a vacuum it's obvious that higher efficiency should help your team win. In practice though, you can still be inefficient and a winning player because so many other things factor in - pace, tempo, rebounding, second chances, defense, etc.

The other important thing TS% does not encapsulate is degree of difficulty. Not all shots are equal, not all players have comparable defenders on them, some guys get double teamed, some teams run plays for easy looks, etc, etc.

Long and short of it - TS% is an interesting statistical note but really gets overused around here. AI is a good extreme example of a guy who could still win despite being horribly inefficient (or a chucker/ballhog, as we used to call it back in the day). But I really want to pull my hair out when I see people raving about this guy having a TS of 60% and that guy at 58%, as if it means anything.

[–] thatsagoodshot@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Regarding degree of difficulty, any thoughts how much effect being the guy who can create in late shot clock situations might affect TS%?

Spitballing, if you're a star who shoots on 25% of your possessions, and in 5% of possessions you are the guy bailing out the offense with a late shot, which we can assume is 20% less efficient than a typical look created within the flow of a successful possession, then you are suppressing your TS% by something like 20% on a quarter of your shooting possessions. That would be something like a 5% dip in TS% vs if you always passed to teammates to take those bad late clock shots.

Simply having a second star player to eat half of these possessions (to say nothing of helping generate better looks overall) would increase this hypothetical TS% by 2.5%. Idk if the numbers are reasonable, but I think they get the point across.