ESPN Newest Advanced Stat - Net Points

[Wigginstime]

Haven't seen much discussion. ESPN had released their newest NBA Stat: "Net Points"

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/44093220/introducing-net-points-latest-nba-metric-amazing-early-findings

Interesting comparing this to PER.

Both stats show the best 2 players in the NBA are Jokic and SGA.

Net Points League Leaders
Rank Player Offense Defense Total
1. Nikola Jokic +365 +61 +427
2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander +304 +40 +345
3. Karl-Anthony Towns +164 +39 +203
4. Jayson Tatum +134 +49 +183
5. Alperen Sengun +71 +111 +181
6. Jarrett Allen +105 +65 +169
7. Domantas Sabonis +127 +40 +167
8. Giannis Antetokounmpo +107 +57 +164
9. Jaren Jackson Jr. +118 +44 +162
10. Donovan Mitchell +151 +2 +153

PER League Leaders
RK PLAYER GP MPG TS% AST TO USG ORR DRR REBR PER VA EWA
1 Nikola Jokic, DEN 56 36.1 .664 29.3 9.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 32.39 657.7 21.9
2 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, OKC 61 34.2 .645 18.2 7.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 31.17 0.0 0.0
3 Giannis Antetokounmpo, MIL 49 33.9 .622 17.5 9.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 30.17 0.0 0.0
4 Zion Williamson, NO 24 28.3 .601 18.1 10.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 28.58 0.0 0.0
5 Anthony Davis, LAL/DAL 43 34.2 .602 12.7 8.1 0.0 9.7 0.0 19.7 27.50 0.0 0.0
6 Mark Williams, CHA 30 25.7 .630 14.4 7.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.84 163.9 5.5
7 Daniel Gafford, DAL 51 21.9 .716 12.8 10.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.69 234.5 7.8
8 Karl-Anthony Towns, NY 54 35.1 .637 12.6 10.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.33 0.0 0.0
9 Victor Wembanyama, SA 46 33.2 .594 13.4 11.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.24 0.0 0.0
10 Joel Embiid, PHI 19 30.2 .580 15.8 11.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 23.76 112.7 3.8

[DLoMor]

Useless stat because Tatum isn’t the 3rd best player in the NBA.

[cpower]

both are terrible terrible stat using raw box scores...throw them to the garbage bin for good

[Special_Puppy]

Its just warmed up PER, the worst advanced stat.

[slick_watts]

dean oliver is an analytics legend but imo a bit of a dinosaur. and there's no methodology posted. not a fan.

[LockoutSeason]

How is that any different than plus/minus?

[magee]

Useless stat because Tatum isn’t the 3rd best player in the NBA.

That's why he's 4th on that list.

*From the total part of the stats.

[bisme37]

Luke Kornet rated higher than Brunson, Ant Edwards and Steph Curry. Looks good to me.

[Blame Rasho]

There is lies, damn lies and then there is statistics…

You got to use context as a caveat.

[dhsilv2]

How is that any different than plus/minus?

They are completely unrelated in any way from what I see here.

[dhsilv2]

Is there a link to the full list and/or method to calculate?

[runtmc]

both are terrible terrible stat using raw box scores...throw them to the garbage bin for good

Why do people think using box score data is some kind of put down? I dont understand that. Second, you're just flat out wrong, it says in the article its using play by play data. There is no methodology given, so who knows how he's using it.

dean oliver is an analytics legend but imo a bit of a dinosaur.

Dean is certainly a legend, one of the early members of the basketball stats community. Aside from Basketball on Paper, he started the APBR message board on the old sonicscentral forum and was an early influential member, along with Dan Rosenbaum, Kevin Pelton, Roland Beech, and to a lesser extent Hollinger (and others of course). He was the first guy from APBR to get hired as an analyst by a front office, and he also helped organize the Sloan conference. I talked stats with Dean a bunch back in the day on the APBR forum when I was still a stats undergrad and can say first hand he's genuinely a very smart guy. He studied math or physics (I dont remember) at CalTech and had a Phd in stats. Suffice to say he knows his stuff.

Back then, there were mostly two camps: the possession based stats camp was lead by Oliver, and +/- based stats was Rosenbaum's camp -- it seems like this is more work along the same vein. He hasnt done much publicly in basketball stats in years, but I dont think its fair to say hes a dinosaur -- its just most of the work he's done has been behind closed doors. He's been in the industry/front offices for a couple decades now, and Im quite sure he's still involved with a lot of the latest stuff going on in analytics.

As far as this metric, its hard to say anything about it, given there isnt anything about the methodology I can find. But given its Oliver's work, it seems like it should be useful, its just hard to know how useful/in what contexts without more information.

[Bush4Ever]

Hard to feel much of anything without a precise methodology and understanding (if applicable) it's incremental utility over and above the more established/trusted by knowledgeable people metrics.

"What does this tell us that we wouldn't otherwise know with X, Y, and Z?"

[Godymas]

you know the stat is bad when Jokic and Sengun lead on the defensive side of the stat

Clearly context is not being accounted for (like Sengun playing with some of the best defenders in the NBA, or Jokic having an atrocious bench)

[slick_watts]

He hasnt done much publicly in basketball stats in years, but I dont think its fair to say hes a dinosaur -- its just most of the work he's done has been behind closed doors. He's been in the industry/front offices for a couple decades now, and Im quite sure he's still involved with a lot of the latest stuff going on in analytics.

maybe it's unfair but i follow him on social media and some of his ideas he shares are just archaic to me. like his 'threshold wins and losses' thread he posted a few weeks ago. it's a line of thinking straight from 2008. i'm very familiar with dean oliver, apbrmetrics, and sonicscentral (former poster!) and still- i think the league has passed him by.

[runtmc]

He hasnt done much publicly in basketball stats in years, but I dont think its fair to say hes a dinosaur -- its just most of the work he's done has been behind closed doors. He's been in the industry/front offices for a couple decades now, and Im quite sure he's still involved with a lot of the latest stuff going on in analytics.

maybe it's unfair but i follow him on social media and some of his ideas he shares are just archaic to me. like his 'threshold wins and losses' thread he posted a few weeks ago. it's a line of thinking straight from 2008. i'm very familiar with dean oliver, apbrmetrics, and sonicscentral (former poster!) and still- i think the league has passed him by.

Yeah, I cant say I know a lot about what hes been up to for at least a decade. That said, I do know he's been interested in/working on threshold wins/losses and similar ideas (win probabilities based on game situations, etc) going back to the very early days of APBR. It sounds a bit like maybe he's pulling out some of his old ideas/work and dusting them off, or maybe has had a recent change in employment and can start publicly talking about some of his work? Dunno.

And you were a poster on APBR? Very cool, what was your handle? I wonder if we ever crossed paths -- I wrote some articles/helped with some of the data collection and sharing/was generally pretty active back in the very early days.

[KGtabake]

So Giannis is the 8th best player in the league and Jarrett Allen is better.

[slick_watts]

And you were a poster on APBR? Very cool, what was your handle? I wonder if we ever crossed paths -- I wrote some articles/helped with some of the data collection and sharing/was generally pretty active back in the very early days.

i was a reader of apbr but never posted there. i was active on sonicscentral though, and was a regular on sonics espn board and in some yahoo groups before that. not sure i want to share user info lol. probably would be embarrassing if anyone remembers me.

[dhsilv2]

So Giannis is the 8th best player in the league and Jarrett Allen is better.

As always, these kinds of things should never be used like that

[Doctor MJ]

Haven't seen much discussion. ESPN had released their newest NBA Stat: "Net Points"

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/44093220/introducing-net-points-latest-nba-metric-amazing-early-findings

Interesting comparing this to PER.

Both stats show the best 2 players in the NBA are Jokic and SGA.

Net Points League Leaders
Rank Player Offense Defense Total
1. Nikola Jokic +365 +61 +427
2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander +304 +40 +345
3. Karl-Anthony Towns +164 +39 +203
4. Jayson Tatum +134 +49 +183
5. Alperen Sengun +71 +111 +181
6. Jarrett Allen +105 +65 +169
7. Domantas Sabonis +127 +40 +167
8. Giannis Antetokounmpo +107 +57 +164
9. Jaren Jackson Jr. +118 +44 +162
10. Donovan Mitchell +151 +2 +153

PER League Leaders
RK PLAYER GP MPG TS% AST TO USG ORR DRR REBR PER VA EWA
1 Nikola Jokic, DEN 56 36.1 .664 29.3 9.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 32.39 657.7 21.9
2 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, OKC 61 34.2 .645 18.2 7.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 31.17 0.0 0.0
3 Giannis Antetokounmpo, MIL 49 33.9 .622 17.5 9.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 30.17 0.0 0.0
4 Zion Williamson, NO 24 28.3 .601 18.1 10.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 28.58 0.0 0.0
5 Anthony Davis, LAL/DAL 43 34.2 .602 12.7 8.1 0.0 9.7 0.0 19.7 27.50 0.0 0.0
6 Mark Williams, CHA 30 25.7 .630 14.4 7.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.84 163.9 5.5
7 Daniel Gafford, DAL 51 21.9 .716 12.8 10.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.69 234.5 7.8
8 Karl-Anthony Towns, NY 54 35.1 .637 12.6 10.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.33 0.0 0.0
9 Victor Wembanyama, SA 46 33.2 .594 13.4 11.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 24.24 0.0 0.0
10 Joel Embiid, PHI 19 30.2 .580 15.8 11.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 23.76 112.7 3.8

The fact this is coming from Dean Oliver says good things about its credibility...but unless they tell us how it works, it's hard for me to get expect to use it.

Another all-in-one metric but better? Okay, how exactly is it better?