Better Adv. Stat: TS% vs PER vs VORP vs BPM vs WS

[Oscar9992]

Which advanced stat is better judging a player?

1. True Shooting %
2. Player Efficiency Rating
3. Value Over Replacement
4. Box Plus/Minus
5. Win Shares

[Texas Chuck]

TS% is the most useful tool simply because it's not trying to tell you how good a player is or isn't. It's just giving you some scoring efficiency information. So I guess its the best, but like anything else, it should never be used in isolation or without context.

[everdiso]

Those are different stats for different things.

TS% is just the best shooting efficiency number to use.

PER is just a nice catch all for counting stats, which you can use instead of pts/rbs/ast/etc., but doesn't try to add any context to that, and doesn't bother trying to evaluate defense.

BPM and ws/48 are similar rate stats that try to catch the player's actual impact on the court both offensively and defensively. Both are useful but neither are great - RPM and RAPTOR are probably better.

VORP and WS are just the sum totals of each game's BPM and ws/48. Cumulative versions of those rate stats - like looking at total points instead of points per game.

[kobe_vs_jordan]

TS% is my first analytic love. I don't see how somebody couldn't like it.

PER is useless IMO more times than not. Not really a great comparison stat. Not sure what the point. A proprietary stat that was made by ESPN.

Plus minus and variation of it are useful but often misused. They are more accurate when comparing players on the same team vs comparing players on different teams.

[HBK_Kliq_33]

1. BPM
2. VORP
3. TS
4. PER
5. Win shares

That's how I would rank them in value. BPM usually gives you a rough estimate of the players impact, so I would say that's the clear best one. TS is just a shooting/efficiency thing and there's more to the game than that. PER favors big men I guess, win shares is more of a team thing. VORP kind of goes hand in hand with BPM it seems.

[NoBias]

BPM, TS and PER is what I generally looking at when evaluating someone after their raw stats. I don't really care for win shares. However, when looking at advanced stats you must factor in several things and eye test is key as well.

[leolozon]

TS% is the only one that clearly works for me.

PER I think is underrated, in the sense that people judge it on what it doesn't try to do. It's a stat showing us how productive someone is and then you have to not compare guys playing 15-25mpg with guys playing 30mpg +. In that sense, it works. I think it's a good indicator of who's an all-star and who's not for example, even though big guys are a little overrated by it.

I don't care much about BPM. According to BPM, Westbrook is a great defensive player. Doncic had a better BPM in his rookie season than Steve Nash in his prime. Come on!

I prefer using WS to BPM or VORP, even though it's not perfect too and he's really dependant on the team you're playing with.

[Alatan]

Its like asking whats the better measurement between length, height and width. They all measure different things.

[dhsilv2]

BPM and VORP are the same stats but if you could use one of these to measure a player sure that's the best.
WS - undervalues stars and over values high minute average starters but next
PER - massively flawed stat but it's extremely simple math and easy to follow and calculate. Good when used just for certain types of players.
TS% - doesn't really answer the question you're asking at all so in this context worthless. It however does the best job of serving a purpose as it's pretty straight forward (minus how it values free throws).

But yeah that's the order based on how the question was phrased.

[dhsilv2]

Its like asking whats the better measurement between length, height and width. They all measure different things.

BPM PER and WS/48 are intended to pretty much all do roughly the same thing. Only TS% is actually intended to be different.

[MrBigShot]

TS% is the only one that clearly works for me.

PER I think is underrated, in the sense that people judge it on what it doesn't try to do. It's a stat showing us how productive someone is and then you have to not compare guys playing 15-25mpg with guys playing 30mpg +. In that sense, it works. I think it's a good indicator of who's an all-star and who's not for example, even though big guys are a little overrated by it.

I don't care much about BPM. According to BPM, Westbrook is a great defensive player. Doncic had a better BPM in his rookie season than Steve Nash in his prime. Come on!

I prefer using WS to BPM or VORP.

Pretty insane. Ben Simmons in his rookie year also had a better BPM and VORP than any of Nash's seasons, yikes. And this is why analytics are virtually useless w/o context and the eye test.

Agree w/ many of the others listing TS%. It feels like the most straight forward of all the common advanced stats.

[I_Like_Dirt]

BPM PER and WS/48 are intended to pretty much all do roughly the same thing. Only TS% is actually intended to be different.

Sort of. I'd suggest this is like asking whether a hammer, a screw driver, a nail gun or a saw is better. The hammer, screw driver and nail gun all do similar jobs differently. The saw does something else entirely. You probably want all of the tools at your disposal if you're trying to actually build something worth a damn.

[dhsilv2]

BPM PER and WS/48 are intended to pretty much all do roughly the same thing. Only TS% is actually intended to be different.

Sort of. I'd suggest this is like asking whether a hammer, a screw driver, a nail gun or a saw is better. The hammer, screw driver and nail gun all do similar jobs differently. The saw does something else entirely. You probably want all of the tools at your disposal if you're trying to actually build something worth a damn.

Kinda. Though if we're going tools, one's a swiss army knife, one's a leatherman, and one's some generic cheap pocket knife. The other is a high grade professional level.

I'm a big fan of a nice leatherman, it gets a hell of a lot of things done without any major problems, but it's never the best tool for the job. the others are nice to open a box or cut you nails with and maybe a few other things here and there. But they're not the best tool, I dunno maybe the swiss army knife has a magnifying glass or a tooth pick your leatherman doesn't so you can use it time to time and the cheapo maybe you use it when you're worried you might break the blade.

[zimpy27]

PIPM is probably the best all-in-one right now.

The stat closest to perfection is TS% but it only tells you how efficient a player is at scoring.

[dhsilv2]

PIPM is probably the best all-in-one right now.

The stat closest to perfection is TS% but it only tells you how efficient a player is at scoring.

How efficient their shots are, might sound like a minor difference but it's not. It doesn't for example look at turnovers where offensive rating does.

[homecourtloss]

@freethedevil

Where’s that chart?

[zimpy27]

PIPM is probably the best all-in-one right now.

The stat closest to perfection is TS% but it only tells you how efficient a player is at scoring.

How efficient their shots are, might sound like a minor difference but it's not. It doesn't for example look at turnovers where offensive rating does.

Yes true

[Quattro]

Sports was more fun before you needed a degree in math to understand what people were talking about.

I actually used to be able to look at the back of my baseball cards when I was a kid and understand what all the numbers meant. Sigh.

[dhsilv2]

Sports was more fun before you needed a degree in math to understand what people were talking about.

I actually used to be able to look at the back of my baseball cards when I was a kid and understand what all the numbers meant. Sigh.

While I do have a degree that required calculus and multiple statistics classes, none of these are THAT hard to understand even for someone a bit less mathematically inclined. They do require a bit of additional work to understand, but being an expert on anything tends to require self study does it not?

[og15]

The numbers being compared are fairly different. TS% I would say is the best because it's really not an "advanced" stat, it's simply just a combined shooting efficiency stat. It is pretty clear what the stat is saying, it doesn't try to rank players, it's just telling us that this is how effective/efficient a player is with possessions where they shoot (either from the field or the line).

PER is a measure of how well you can fill up the box score with positive stats, it will correlate with the best players since those are almost always the players who will put up the most positive stats, but it isn't a stat that has power for any good comparison. What it is good at is showing how productive a player is / can be per minute, and that has value of it is used correctly.

Win shares like most primarily box score based stats are very bad at measuring defense. Defensive win shares relies on individual defensive rating (not to be confused with on/off Drtg). Individual defensive rating relies on team defensive rating and a player is better (lower Drtg) or worse (higher Drtg) based on how well they grab defensive rebounds, and get steals and blocks per minute. It assumes all players are equally good at non box score defensive things such as deflections, charges, shot deterrence, communication, rotations, etc...you see the problem. So it is why solid defensive rebounders like David Lee who can average a fairly good per minute blocks/steals playing on a great defensive team (eg: Spurs) will be ranked as an elite defender by the stat, but are far from that.

I don't care much about BPM. According to BPM, Westbrook is a great defensive player. Doncic had a better BPM in his rookie season than Steve Nash in his prime. Come on!

I prefer using WS to BPM or VORP.

BPM is an odd one, you are now mixing regression to weigh the value of different box score stats. Defensive BPM is just subtracting offensive BPM from total. We do also have to understand what it is measuring. It is looking to measure value, not necessarily how good a player is. What I mean is that it is a cumulative stat, so playing more minutes (and therefore likely more games) will increase your number. So a player can have more value to his teams winning for a season vs another guy because he played 20 more games, but he's not a better player. VORP is trying to take away the cumulative part of BPM. So, to calculate

Value over Replacement Player (VORP) converts the BPM rate into an estimate of each player's overall contribution to the team, measured vs. what a theoretical "replacement player" would provide, where the "replacement player" is defined as a player on minimum salary or not a normal member of a team's rotation.

VORP, the formula is simply: [BPM – (-2.0)] * (% of minutes played)*(team games/82). This yields the number of points the player is producing over a replacement player, per 100 TEAM possessions over an entire season.