I wanted to make this post because I see a lot of misusage (heh) of the USG% stat in rhetorical arguments. A fine example:
This statement sounds like someone who has some deep understanding of advanced stats and has uncovered some unique and meaningful insight into a player's game, when in reality they're just telling you what would be an obvious relationship between a basic counting stat (points per game) and an advanced stat (USG%).
What does USG% tell us? Basketball-reference.com and NBA.com use slightly different formulas to calculate USG% (which you can find here and here), which spit out slightly different results, but they are both telling you the same thing: the percentage of a team's plays that end with an individual player while he is on the court. A play can only end in a finite number of ways: a made shot, a missed shot, or a turnover. That's it. There is no other way for a play to end except for the game clock expiring, which counts as nothing. There is no other possible way for a play to end.
USG% does not measure: how ball dominant a player is, or how much they need the ball in their hands, or how much of a possession a player takes up, or whether they set up their teammates, etc. It only tells us the percentage of a team's plays that end with an individual player while he is on the court.
A very exaggerated example of how USG% can be deceiving:
Imagine a game of 2-on-2 with a 24 second shot clock and 100 plays per team and every shot is worth 2pts.
Player A and Player B are teammates. Player A brings the ball down the court and on EVERY possession, dribbles the ball around the court for 23 seconds before passing it to Player B, who is forced to throw up a quick shot or get caught with the ball in his hands as the shot clock expires (a turnover). Let's say that 50% of the time he gets the shot off, and 20% of the time he makes it. The other 50% of the time he commits a turnover. Let's also assume every missed shot ends in a defensive rebound.
In this scenario, Player A will have a USG% of 0, and Player B will have a USG% of 100. Player A will average 10 assists/gm, Player B will average 20 ppg on 20% shooting and 50 TOV/gm.
This is a purposely exaggerated example to show you that USG% isn't really all that insightful at all. You might look at the stats and conclude that Player B is a ball dominant, inefficient chucker who is sloppy with the ball, when that's not really the case at all.
I'll come back to this example a little later.
Because scoring is the result of shooting the basketball, there is an extremely strong correlation between USG% and scoring average. So strong, in fact, that among the Top 40 scorers in the NBA last year, 36 of them were in the Top 40 in USG%.
Here is a scatter plot of the PPG average of the Top 40 scorers last year against their USG%.
You'll notice a pretty clear correlation here, which makes sense. To score, you must shoot, and by shooting more, your USG% increases. Pretty straightforward, right?
There is a wrinkle, of course - and that is in a player's TOV rate and their shooting efficiency.
If we go back to our exaggerated example, if Player B increases his shooting % from 20% to 30% (remember, these are all tough shots he's taking, thanks to his teammate), then his scoring average will increase from 20ppg to 30ppg while his USG% will remain unchanged. Similarly, if he maintains his shooting % of 20%, but he reduces his turnovers from 50/gm to 40/gm, and those 10 possessions generate 10 extra shots, his scoring average will increase from 20ppg to 24ppg.
So, whenever we see a player's PPG increase, then there can only be a handful of explanations why: his USG% went up, his shooting efficiency went up, or his turnovers were replaced with more shots (if his turnovers are reduced but they are not replaced by shots, then his USG% will just go down without a corresponding increase in PPG).
So, whenever you see someone say this:
You can respond with "yeah, no ."
The idea that the Spurs will add a #2 scorer whom they'll presumably pay the max at some point, and then turn around and reduce their usage considerably is a weird concept. Why would you acquire that player just to do that? Likelywise, if that player is more efficient at scoring, why would you want to reduce their usage for someone who is less efficient? The only explanation would be that you expect that player's efficiency to increase dramatically. This would be the situation with Wemby. He's actually one of the less efficient high usage scorers, ranking 39th in scoring average but #8 in USG%. But he was a rookie, and we expect that to continue to improve dramatically as his shooting improves and (maybe more importantly) his turnovers are reduced.
Coincidently, among the Top 40 scoring average leaders last year, two of the two most efficient were Demar Derozan, who ranked #24 in scoring but #44 in USG%, and Lauri Markkanen, who ranked #26 in scoring but #51 in USG%. In the case of Lauri, that's because he's a highly efficient scorer (indeed, he's a 50/40/90 guy who doesn't commit a lot of turnovers). So it's odd to hear people say they'd want him to be our number 3 option, or his usage would get significantly reduced if we signed him... why would you do that? Why would you prefer less efficient Devin Vassell shots or Keldon Johnson shots to highly efficient Lauri Markkanen shots?
Yes, this has been a secret Lauri post. But hopefully you learned something in the meantime, and folks can cut back on their utterly braindead misusage (heh) of USG%.
Yeah, when Markkanen had to share the ball he was a 14ppg 5 rpg player. When he got many more shots on a bad team he turned into a 23ppg.
That's not real. That's called inflation.
When he plays for a good team, he will be back to a 14ppg player.
He's a pretty good player. Is he worth a max? no.
I'm glad you're pointing this out.
I knew I could count on Mr. Body doubling down on stupid.
If we sign Shai and greatly reduce his usage, he'll also see a significant reduction in his scoring average.
Shai isn't worth the max.
Go KiLl YoUrSeLf
One of the other terrible takes he keeps spouting is that it’s not worth trading for players that other teams want to trade away. I guess the Spurs should never try to make trades then. You can’t fix stupid.
Spurs FO: Hi, Mr. Opposing GM, I am interested in [PLAYER], would you like to trade with us?
Opposing GM: Hi, Mr. Spurs FO, I would be willing to trade [PLAYER] for the right offer, what do you suggest?
Spurs FO: NEVERMIND, HE SUCKS.
I think for many it's very easy to confuse "usage" with "time of possession", and while they are sometimes correlated, they definitely do not measure the same thing. The discrepancy is most evident in high efficiency play finishers both perimeter (eg Klay, Lauri Bird) and paint based (eg Amare Stoudemire) who may not initiate or connect a ton but are very efficient at taking the ball from someone else and getting it into the basket.
If anything, the discussion should be that Markkanen went from a situation where he wasn't even a top 3 option on offense (In Cleveland, where he was #6 on the team in FGA per game) to a situation where he was the #1 option and therefore much more the focus of opposing team defenses... If his improvement wasn't legit, his efficiency would've gone down, not up, and then the argument that his increased scoring was only due to getting more shots might make sense. But with more pressure and more attention, his efficiency only improved.
This is the first time ever I've seen someone criticize a player for raising his ppg by 10 while keeping the same efficency.
He just has zero self awareness.
And he didn't keep the same efficiency, he increased it. In Cleveland his TS% was .582, and in his two years in Utah it was .640 and .631, the two best of his career.
Last edited by R. DeMurre; 07-06-2024 at 01:06 PM.
Sounds like exactly the kind of player who usage should be immediately reduced on another team!
great post. Would be nice to see more legitimate posts on analytics and advanced stats. Not as the sole points of discussion of course but as well-reasoned supporting facts.
But most people form a position after just "feeling" a certain way and pull in some lazy analysis that support their world view without bothering to break down the layers and examine if it really does. Then they get angry and double down on their argument whenever challenged with opposing facts instead of considering they should re-evaluate their position.
Tbf this lesson is needed everywhere in society.
Just keeping efficiency the same while increasing scoring average is really hard. Most players who see an uptick in usage are less efficient iirc.
I thought a fun side metric to run would be PPG/USG%, or, in other words, how many points does a player get for each unit of usage.
What I found was that, of the Top 40 Scorers in the league, here were the Top-5 most efficient (at turning usage into points)
1. Luka
2. KD
3. Demar
4. Lauri
5. AD
The bottom 5:
36. JJJ
37. Cam Thomas
38. Cade
39. LaMelo
40. Wemby
I suspect we'll see Wemby take a huge jump in efficiency this year as he matures and as we get improved play around him
Sweet lord, another backdoor Markenen thread?? How many of these do we really need guys.
Absolutely. Wemby was given the ball in such ty position by the Freeze Out Krew and also horked a lot of shots early in the shot clock early in the season. Knowing it was the only way he was going to get a shot.
Crusty Clifford Paul will be an improvement. For that matter out grandmothers would be an improvement at pg vs last years Popped offensive offensive strategy.
So CPO has an extremely low bar to clear.
I'm going to keep track of this PPG/USG% stat throughout the year, I think it's a pretty nifty one. The trouble is that I don't have access to any kind of database where I can easily pull PPG and USG from the same table - I had to do some manual coding for it this time. Only took about 10 minutes, but it still not just something I can easily look up.
For those who want to follow along, Wemby's PPG/USG% was 0.665, Luka's was 0.942. The simple average amongst the Top40 was 0.841 with a median of 0.848.
Here's what it looks like for the top 40 if you lay them all out from best (Luka) to worst (Wemby)
And here is the data table for anyone interested:
Player PPG Scoring Rank USG% USG% Rank PPG/USG PPG/USG Rank Joel Embiid 34.7 1 39.6 1 0.876 16 Luka Doncic 33.9 2 36 2 0.942 1 Giannis Antetokounmpo 30.4 3 33 4 0.921 7 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander 30.1 4 32.8 5 0.918 8 Jalen Brunson 28.7 5 32.5 6 0.883 14 Devin Booker 27.1 6 29.8 19 0.909 10 Kevin Durant 27.1 6 29 25 0.934 2 Jayson Tatum 26.9 8 30.2 17 0.891 13 Donovan Mitc 26.6 9 31.4 9 0.847 21 De'Aaron Fox 26.6 9 31 11 0.858 18 Stephen Curry 26.4 11 31.3 10 0.843 23 Nikola Jokic 26.4 11 29.3 23 0.901 11 Anthony Edwards 25.9 13 32.3 7 0.802 29 Tyrese Maxey 25.9 13 28 30 0.925 6 Trae Young 25.7 15 30.5 13 0.843 24 LeBron James 25.7 15 29.2 24 0.880 15 Kyrie Irving 25.6 17 28.1 29 0.911 9 Ja Morant 25.1 18 30.4 15 0.826 26 Anthony Davis 24.7 19 26.7 34 0.925 5 Damian Lillard 24.3 20 28.4 28 0.856 19 Julius Randle 24 21 29.9 18 0.803 28 DeMar DeRozan 24 21 25.8 38 0.930 3 LaMelo Ball 23.9 23 34.3 3 0.697 39 Desmond Bane 23.7 24 28.5 27 0.832 25 Kawhi Leonard 23.7 24 26.5 37 0.894 12 Lauri Markkanen 23.2 26 25 40 0.928 4 Jaylen Brown 23 27 28.9 26 0.796 30 Zion Williamson 22.9 28 29.7 20 0.771 32 Cade Cunningham 22.7 29 30.8 12 0.737 38 Paolo Banchero 22.6 30 29.7 20 0.761 33 Anfernee Simons 22.6 30 28 30 0.807 27 Paul George 22.6 30 26.6 35 0.850 20 Cam Thomas 22.5 33 30.5 13 0.738 37 Jaren Jackson Jr. 22.5 33 30.4 15 0.740 36 Dejounte Murray 22.5 33 26.6 35 0.846 22 Kyle Kuzma 22.2 36 29.7 20 0.747 35 Karl-Anthony Towns 21.8 37 27.4 33 0.796 31 Pascal Siakam 21.7 38 25.2 39 0.861 17 Victor Wembanyama 21.4 39 32.2 8 0.665 40 Jamal Murray 21.2 40 27.9 32 0.760 34
Been thinking about this a little bit and aside from my slipping in my hidden Lauri agenda, I think some educational posts like these on advanced metrics would be really informative and helpful for this board. I admit, there are a lot of metrics that I don't fully grasp and would love to understand better.
But most people form a position after just "feeling" a certain way and pull in some lazy analysis that support their world view without bothering to break down the layers and examine if it really does. Then they get angry and double down on their argument whenever challenged with opposing facts instead of considering they should re-evaluate their position.
Tbf this lesson is needed everywhere in society.
SpursBills is one of the best posters around when it comes to advanced metrics, so maybe I can recruit him (and others) into this effort. Maybe timvp could pay us in Chuck E Cheese coupons to use these for his website if he wanted
You need to do pts/36 or something similar. Raw PPG will be biased toward players who play big minutes.
Edit: In response to your post comparing PPG/USG above.
Good call. I'll do that if I have time later this week. It's mostly the same guys in the top PPG scores, with a couple of exceptions, but the order is obviously shuffled around a bit. Victor, for example, shoots up from 39th in PPG to 15th in Pts/36.
I went ahead and calculated Pts/36 per USG% based on the suggestion above and was saw a little bit of movement. When I started this, I did not have this outcome in mind... but LOL, Lauri is b far the most efficient Top 40 scorer in the league, and the ONLY player in the Top 40 with a Pts/36 per USG% of greater than 1.
Top 5:
1. Lauri
2. Shai
3. Giannis
4. Kawhi
5. Kyrie
Bottom 5:
36. Randle
37. Wemby
38. Cade
39. Paolo
40. LaMelo
Full data table, ranked by Pts/36 per USG
Player PPG Scoring Rank USG% USG% Rank PPG/USG PPG/USG Rank Pts/36 Pts/36 Rank Pts/36 per USG Pts/36 per USG Rank Lauri Markkanen 23.2 26 25 40 0.928 4 25.3 21 1.012 1 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander 30.1 4 32.8 5 0.918 8 31.8 3 0.970 2 Giannis Antetokounmpo 30.4 3 33 4 0.921 7 31.2 4 0.945 3 Kawhi Leonard 23.7 24 26.5 37 0.894 12 24.9 25 0.940 4 Kyrie Irving 25.6 17 28.1 29 0.911 9 26.4 14 0.940 5 Joel Embiid 34.7 1 39.6 1 0.876 16 37.2 1 0.939 6 Anthony Davis 24.7 19 26.7 34 0.925 5 25 24 0.936 7 Nikola Jokic 26.4 11 29.3 23 0.901 11 27.4 7 0.935 8 Pascal Siakam 21.7 38 25.2 39 0.861 17 23.5 37 0.933 9 Stephen Curry 26.4 11 31.3 10 0.843 23 29.1 6 0.930 10 Devin Booker 27.1 6 29.8 19 0.909 10 27.1 8 0.909 11 Kevin Durant 27.1 6 29 25 0.934 2 26.2 15 0.903 12 Luka Doncic 33.9 2 36 2 0.942 1 32.5 2 0.903 13 Paul George 22.6 30 26.6 35 0.850 20 24 34 0.902 14 Jalen Brunson 28.7 5 32.5 6 0.883 14 29.2 5 0.898 15 LeBron James 25.7 15 29.2 24 0.880 15 26.2 15 0.897 16 Jayson Tatum 26.9 8 30.2 17 0.891 13 27 10 0.894 17 Tyrese Maxey 25.9 13 28 30 0.925 6 24.9 25 0.889 18 DeMar DeRozan 24 21 25.8 38 0.930 3 22.8 39 0.884 19 Zion Williamson 22.9 28 29.7 20 0.771 32 26.1 17 0.879 20 Karl-Anthony Towns 21.8 37 27.4 33 0.796 31 24 34 0.876 21 Desmond Bane 23.7 24 28.5 27 0.832 25 24.9 25 0.874 22 Damian Lillard 24.3 20 28.4 28 0.856 19 24.8 28 0.873 23 Jamal Murray 21.2 40 27.9 32 0.760 34 24.2 33 0.867 24 Donovan Mitc 26.6 9 31.4 9 0.847 21 27.1 8 0.863 25 De'Aaron Fox 26.6 9 31 11 0.858 18 26.6 11 0.858 26 Jaylen Brown 23 27 28.9 26 0.796 30 24.7 29 0.855 27 Dejounte Murray 22.5 33 26.6 35 0.846 22 22.7 40 0.853 28 Anfernee Simons 22.6 30 28 30 0.807 27 23.6 36 0.843 29 Trae Young 25.7 15 30.5 13 0.843 24 25.7 19 0.843 30 Cam Thomas 22.5 33 30.5 13 0.738 37 25.7 19 0.843 30 Jaren Jackson Jr. 22.5 33 30.4 15 0.740 36 25.2 22 0.829 32 Ja Morant 25.1 18 30.4 15 0.826 26 25.1 23 0.826 33 Kyle Kuzma 22.2 36 29.7 20 0.747 35 24.5 30 0.825 34 Anthony Edwards 25.9 13 32.3 7 0.802 29 26.6 11 0.824 35 Julius Randle 24 21 29.9 18 0.803 28 24.3 32 0.813 36 Victor Wembanyama 21.4 39 32.2 8 0.665 40 26 18 0.807 37 Cade Cunningham 22.7 29 30.8 12 0.737 38 24.4 31 0.792 38 Paolo Banchero 22.6 30 29.7 20 0.761 33 23.2 38 0.781 39 LaMelo Ball 23.9 23 34.3 3 0.697 39 26.6 11 0.776 40
And here is a visual representation for which is good for seeing how Lauri and Shai really stand out from the pack.
you son of a
TIL Assists, as step1 in a 2-step terminal play, are not included in usage. Preesh. But also FTs aren’t included either??
FTs are included. FGA, FTA and TOV are the things that count towards usage. Basically, all the ways that a team's play can end.
Basketball reference:
Usg% - Usage Percentage (available since the 1977-78 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * ((FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV) * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm FGA + 0.44 * Tm FTA + Tm TOV)). Usage percentage is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
