RealGM

I think TS is not the only measurement of efficiency or should not be!
Turnovers can raise efficiency and diminish it just as much as FG% or FT%
For example like Durant last season 28 ppg on 61 % TS.
It sounds astonishing!
He also averaged 3.8 turnovers, while not being a real playmaker despite 29% USG (3.5 Assists)!
Does this diminish his efficiency?

Compare it to McGrady 03! 32 ppg on 56 % TS.
A lot of the posters here would argue now, that Durant clearly had the more efficient season while his volume was not that much lower!
But McGrady managed it to average 2.6 turnovers on really heavy usage (35%), while being a really good playmaker and averaging 5.5 Assists!

But now to me, it looks like McGrady was just as efficient as Durant this season!
How would you factor in turnovers or do you even think they should be factored in way more when we are talking about efficiency?

(Now something really theoretical, not necessary to read if you do not want to)
1 turnover is one lost possession, whereas a missed shot is not necessarily a lost possession.
Lets pretend here that both equals a lost posession!

McGrady had 1.2 TOs less per game than Durant, which you could substract from his FGA per game!
Now both would have equalt TOs
If you do that Macs FGA per game would be reduced from 24.2 to 23!
If you look at his adjusted TS now, his TS would rise to 59% opposed to KDs 61% on a still higher volume, 4 points more and averaging 2 APG more while having the same TO rate as Durant.
So was Durants season really more efficient?

So I feel like TS% does not tell the whole story about efficiency!

Essentially, this is why ORTG exists, since it accounts for turnovers and offensive rebounds. TS% is scorin efficiency though, not total offensive output , so it is more a mater of knowing what a stat is actually measuring.

Yep. ORTG basically gives roughly weight not just to scoring but also to turnovers (which count for 0 points per possession, since it's a failed possession), offensive rebounds (since they extend a possession), and assists.

One thing I don't understand about TS% though is that it seemingly weights points from FTs better than regular FGs. A guy who goes 4-4 from the field has a worse TS% than a guy who goes 8-8 from the line, for starters.

Maybe it's not a bad idea to place TS% alongside eFG% used with FT/FGA, which work better on the team level.

Whenever you talk about turnovers, imo you should also be considering steals because they have pretty much the same impact as tos do on the plus side. If you want to count them in your metric only when converted to baskets that's fine as well.

You can also look at points per possession, which is probably the most intuitive number.