Historical TS Add Analysis

[Doctor MJ]

Hey y'all,

Sharing a spreadsheet I made using bkref's TS Add data:

Historical TS Add

I may eventually move it over to the Stats board as that's the more natural home, but I did this as part of my Top 100 analysis, so PC board I think has the largest audience for it.

Sheets:
1. Top 5 TS Add leaders from each year back through Mikan's BAA debut. In ABA years, leaderboard is combined between the two leagues.

2. TS Add Career & Peak ordered by Debut among players who have made appearances in the Top 100, probably the most useful sheet for me.

3. Same group, sorted by TS Add Career.

4. Same group, sorted by TS Add Peak.

I'll refrain from injecting my own perspective on the data at this time, but think it would be great if people dug into the data themselves and shared their takeaways.

[kayess]

Excuse my ignorance here Doc but - what exactly is TS Add? Wasn't able to find anything on it :/

[eminence]

Excuse my ignorance here Doc but - what exactly is TS Add? Wasn't able to find anything on it :/

It's basically a combination of rTS% and scoring volume.

[Jordan Syndrome]

Talk about a stat that doesn't love Jordan...

[Owly]

Hey y'all,

Sharing a spreadsheet I made using bkref's TS Add data:

Historical TS Add

I may eventually move it over to the Stats board as that's the more natural home, but I did this as part of my Top 100 analysis, so PC board I think has the largest audience for it.

Sheets:
1. Top 5 TS Add leaders from each year back through Mikan's BAA debut. In ABA years, leaderboard is combined between the two leagues.

2. TS Add Career & Peak ordered by Debut among players who have made appearances in the Top 100, probably the most useful sheet for me.

3. Same group, sorted by TS Add Career.

4. Same group, sorted by TS Add Peak.

I'll refrain from injecting my own perspective on the data at this time, but think it would be great if people dug into the data themselves and shared their takeaways.

Spelling/typo heads up:
'98 "Johnes" - Jones
'17 "Isiah" - Isaiah

[Doctor MJ]

Excuse my ignorance here Doc but - what exactly is TS Add? Wasn't able to find anything on it :/

No worries. Here's bkref's announcement of their Adjusted Shooting stats:

https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2020/06/adjusted-shooting-stats-added-to-basketball-reference/

Note they also have some leaderboards there that I think it would be great if people talked about here.

TS Add is specifically about comparing a player's TS% to the league norm at the time, and then multiplying by volume.

It's certainly not the end-all be-all of scoring stats, but it's something we didn't have ready access to as data before, and to my knowledge bkref still hadn't made that data searchable yet, so with the Top 100 project I just started making some spreadsheets.

[Doctor MJ]

Spelling/typo heads up:
'98 "Johnes" - Jones
'17 "Isiah" - Isaiah

Thanks Owly!

[Doctor MJ]

Talk about a stat that doesn't love Jordan...

He still looks great, just admittedly not exactly GOAT. I don't think that's serious "proof" against Jordan, but Kareem looks pretty dang amazing doesn't he?

[Jordan Syndrome]

Talk about a stat that doesn't love Jordan...

He still looks great, just admittedly not exactly GOAT. I don't think that's serious "proof" against Jordan, but Kareem looks pretty dang amazing doesn't he?

Yeah and the biggest thing about Jordan is he was a huge floor raiser with his massive volume + efficiency.

Kareem and Gilmore look great and appear to be the best scoring bigs in the 70s and 80s.

[Doctor MJ]

Talk about a stat that doesn't love Jordan...

He still looks great, just admittedly not exactly GOAT. I don't think that's serious "proof" against Jordan, but Kareem looks pretty dang amazing doesn't he?

Yeah and the biggest thing about Jordan is he was a huge floor raiser with his massive volume + efficiency.

Kareem and Gilmore look great and appear to be the best scoring bigs in the 70s and 80s.

Well but I would say Dantley is far more of a floor-raiser than Jordan and he's got great TS Add numbers.

While it's true that in general volume scorers with less than ideal efficiency are likely to be floor-raisers, Jordan's success over his contemporaries has a lot to do with the fact that his mode of scoring, at whatever efficiency, was quite robust in the face of playoff competitions.

Re: best scoring bigs of '70s & 80s. Well clearly Kareem is #1 on that list. Gilmore is a more interesting question. I think folks should think hard about how to evaluate Gilmore's career. I'm generally higher on Gilmore than most, but I understand why some who watched Gilmore through his career are lower on him.

Regardless, love that you're looking for possible conclusions, and I think anyone who dismisses Gilmore lightly need to understand that he was in a very real sense ahead of his team.

[kayess]

Checking if I'm getting this right: Essentially, if Durant scored x points on y true shooting attempts, you get the difference between his output and league average TS on y shooting attempts, correct?

If that's the case, initial thoughts:

1) In the context of determining this stat's usefulness, I think it's important to think about differences in results between archetypes (not saying this should be the grouping, just a first crack at things): high volume + high efficiency (Kareem), mid volume + high efficiency (say Reggie), high volume + mid efficiency (??? - Jordan probably at the super top end here, though Kobe is probably the poster boy for this archetype)

- This stat might even underrate the top-end high volume, high efficiency scorers, because it's more difficult to maintain a high TS over a higher volume
- OTOH, while we all know Reggie is a god, I think guys in his archetype might be slightly overrated.
- For the same reason, the Jordan group may be underrated because e.g. going from 30->40 TS attempts and only incurring a 5pp decrease in efficiency might actually be far more valuable than staying at 30 TS
- On that last point: I think because it treats every TS attempt as "the same", it doesn't account for diminishing returns in shot quality, etc. Not exactly sure how to account for this

2) Really, utterly shocked this stat doesn't love Jordan, especially the earlier years, but at the same time it's not unsurprising it loves Barkley, Reggie

3) Wonder how a defensive equivalent would look like - TS allowed vs. TS attempts challenged, and obviously by zones would be great

[Odinn21]

Excuse my ignorance here Doc but - what exactly is TS Add? Wasn't able to find anything on it :/

TS Add is about this;

In 1979-80, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 2034 points on 1592.44 true shooting attempts (1383 fga and 476 fta).
If his efficiency was on the same level as the league average he would've scored 1692.172 points (2 * 1592.44 tsa * 0.531314 ts%).
2034 is more than 1692.172 by 341.828.

So, Kareem's efficiency made him get roughly 342 points more than what it should be the norm in that season.

That's how it works with TS Add.

[Jordan Syndrome]

He still looks great, just admittedly not exactly GOAT. I don't think that's serious "proof" against Jordan, but Kareem looks pretty dang amazing doesn't he?

Yeah and the biggest thing about Jordan is he was a huge floor raiser with his massive volume + efficiency.

Kareem and Gilmore look great and appear to be the best scoring bigs in the 70s and 80s.

Well but I would say Dantley is far more of a floor-raiser than Jordan and he's got great TS Add numbers. [/quote]

Strictly as scorers, yeah Dantley is ahead of just about everyone.

While it's true that in general volume scorers with less than ideal efficiency are likely to be floor-raisers, Jordan's success over his contemporaries has a lot to do with the fact that his mode of scoring, at whatever efficiency, was quite robust in the face of playoff competitions.

I view Jordan as both a floor raiser and ceiling raiser but ultimately he fit the bill as a better ceiling raiser in his era but in other eras (modern day for example) I see him as a more floor raiser. This could be a hot take but it's how I view players in the Jordan mold.

Re: best scoring bigs of '70s & 80s. Well clearly Kareem is #1 on that list. Gilmore is a more interesting question. I think folks should think hard about how to evaluate Gilmore's career. I'm generally higher on Gilmore than most, but I understand why some who watched Gilmore through his career are lower on him.

I love Gilmore and the way he transformed during his career.

Regardless, love that you're looking for possible conclusions, and I think anyone who dismisses Gilmore lightly need to understand that he was in a very real sense ahead of his team.

Very much so. He understood good shots as well as anyone from his time.

[Odinn21]

Hey y'all,

Sharing a spreadsheet I made using bkref's TS Add data:

Historical TS Add

BTW, I think you could do small improvements to make it way more comprehensive.
To provide perspective about average quality, you could add number of games played and probably make a small calculation for 82 games. For example;
Kareem has +4718.8 over 1560 games. That's +248.0 on 82 games average.
Gilmore has +3880.0 over 1329 games. +239.4.
Wilt has +3587.0 over 1045 games. +281.5.
That'd be meaningful IMO.

You could also add season info of peaks.

---

If you don't want to look at 100+ names over again, I can do it if you'd let me get access to editing.

[Doctor MJ]

Hey y'all,

Sharing a spreadsheet I made using bkref's TS Add data:

Historical TS Add

BTW, I think you could do small improvements to make it way more comprehensive.
To provide perspective about quality of average, you could add number of games played and probably make a small calculation for 82 games. For example;
Kareem has +4718.8 over 1560 games. That's +248.0 on 82 games average.
Gilmore has +3880.0 over 1329 games. +239.4.
Wilt has +3587.0 over 1045 games. +281.5.
That'd be meaningful IMO.

You could also add season info of peaks.

---

If you don't want to look at 100+ names over again, I can do it if you'd let me get access to editing.

Y'know what? You go ahead. Do consider duplicating the spreadsheet if you're inspired to do major surgery, but if you're just adding columns, go right ahead. Request Edit access, or if you prefer PM me your email.

[Odinn21]

Y'know what? You go ahead. Do consider duplicating the spreadsheet if you're inspired to do major surgery, but if you're just adding columns, go right ahead. Request Edit access, or if you prefer PM me your email.

Done under an hour.
I just edited the 3rd "Career TS Add" page. Added the things I talked about. Also added a simple page as "on average".

As a minor observation; it is insane how close Olajuwon, Duncan and Ewing are. Only Sam Jones is between them.

[Doctor MJ]

Y'know what? You go ahead. Do consider duplicating the spreadsheet if you're inspired to do major surgery, but if you're just adding columns, go right ahead. Request Edit access, or if you prefer PM me your email.

Done under an hour.
I just edited the 3rd "Career TS Add" page. Added the things I talked about. Also added a simple page as "on average".

As a minor observation; it is insane how close Olajuwon, Duncan and Ewing are. Only Sam Jones is between them.

Added Experience columns so we can easily compare where these years fell in a player's arc.

It's fascinating looking at that Average list. Great add!

[70sFan]

It's nice to see Gilmore finally getting credit he deserves!

[LA Bird]

Great work but Isiah's peak TS Add should be +40.0. It is his second best season that is -21.7.

[frica]

Well, this stat seems to like DeAndre Jordan too...
So take it with a grain of context.