Adjusted Efficiency Differential (AED)

Adjusted Efficiency Differential (AED) adjusts basic efficiency differential (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency) to account for opponent strength and game location (road/home). It aims to single out the rest days impact more precisely. Because AED measures expected efficiency “relative” to the actual efficiency, a negative AED might be just fine. Here are samples of what negative AED cases mean: If …

Adjusted Player Efficiency Rating (APER)

Adjusted Player Efficiency Rating, aka APER is a version of Hollinger’s PER where unassisted/assisted field goals and charges taken are included. Unfortunately, APER is also as flawed as PER.

Adjusted Plus-Minus (APM)

Adjusted Plus-Minus, a.k.a. APM, has been considered to be the best player evaluation metric. But it also could be misleading. Let’s dive in! What is Adjusted Plus-Minus (APM) in brief? Over a given time period, the basic plus-minus results are getting adjusted to account for both the teammates and the opponents on the court. What does adjusted plus-minus do? It …

Advanced Scout

Advanced Scout was developed by IBM during the mid-1990s as a data mining and knowledge management software tool. Advanced Scout reveals hidden patterns in NBA play-by-play data and provide additional insights to coaches and other related organizations. Advanced Scout not only collects in-game structured stats but also unstructured multimedia footage. NBA teams have access to Advanced Scout so that coaches …

Amisco

Established in 1995, Amisco was the inventor and world leader in tracking technology and performance analysis solutions for professional football (soccer). In 2011, Amisco was acquired by Prozone. Then Prozone was acquired by STATS in May 2015. With regional offices in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, and South Africa, the current Amisco network comprises of more than 80 clients …

Analytics Movement in the NBA

Analytics in sports, also known as Moneyball, is the ability to act in the context of using data. The old school method, scouts measuring talent by watching, a.k.a. the “eye-test” didn’t die. But now it should have gained an unlikely ally. And there’s no doubt; as “big data” influences decisions on and off the court, the entire basketball operations department …

APBRmetrics

APBRmetrics takes its name from the acronym APBR, which stands for the Association for Professional Basketball Research.

Approximate Value (AV)

Approximate Value is the metric which is an estimate of a player’s value, making no fine distinctions, but, rather, distinguishing easily between very good seasons, average seasons, and poor seasons. Alternative method shall be assigned according to the following rules shown here Before the ’73-74 season, steals, blocks and turnovers weren’t kept as official stats. In the credits formula, those …

Assist Percentage

Assist percentage, aka assist ratio is an estimated percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while the player is on the court. It’s one of the most basic tempo-free (adjusted for team pace and minutes played) NBA stats Assist percentage is a much useful NBA statistic to evaluate a player’s passing skills. If the player’s team is fast-paced, then …

Balanced Scoring

Balanced Scoring for NBA teams can be measured by using the Herfindahl Index (HHI).

Basketball On Paper

Basketball On Paper is a book written by Dean Oliver. In his book, Oliver highlights general strategies for teams when they’re winning or losing and what aspects should be the focus in either situation. He describes and quantifies the jobs of team leaders and role players, then discusses the interactions between players and how to achieve the best fit. Oliver …

Bayesian Networks

Bayesian networks are the probabilistic graphical models that represent a set of variables and their probabilistic independencies. A Bayesian network can be used in predicting the outcome of sports events which have recently been the mainly focused field of data science.

Big Data & Advanced Analytics Summit

IE. Big Data & Analytics is a global community and think-tank for senior-level Big Data executives, data engineers, architects, data scientists & advanced analytics executives. IE. Summits held on fields that include Sports Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Business Intelligence and Web&Social Media Analytics.

Bill James

Bill James is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in …

Box Plus-Minus (BPM)

Box plus-minus is based on box score for evaluating basketball players’ quality and contribution to the team from play-by-play regression. BPM takes box score stats from an individual and team level and tries to estimate player performance relative to the NBA average. Since BPM is a per-100-possession stat where 0.0 is league average, +5 means the player is 5 points …

Box Score Data

Box score data is a structured summary of the results from a sports competition. The box score lists the game score as well as individual and team achievements in the game. For the NBA, the 1986-87 season is the earliest season available with complete box score stats. In basketball, we need to account for intangible things such as setting the …

CARMELO

CARMELO, was a method developed by FiveThirtyEight, tried to forecast players’ performance. CARMELO compared a player to similar players of the past, and generates future projection in terms of wins above replacement (WARP). A new plus-minus metric called RAPTOR has been replaced with CARMELO which is not being used anymore. CARMELO stands for “Career-Arc Regression Model Estimator with Local Optimization” …

Catapult Sports

Catapult Sports, established in 1976, is an Australian company which has been in the athlete analytics industry. It focuses on engineer wearable athlete tracking technology that provides objective data on athlete performance. Catapult’s athlete analytics system is an all-encompassing performance monitoring tool that is being used by some of the biggest teams in the world. Originally developed in conjunction with …

Citizen Sports

Citizen Sports, acquired by Yahoo in 2010, was offering fans a number of web applications that allow interaction. Jeffrey Ma co-founded the company in 2004 and is a tireless evangelist for the Citizen Sports mission. He has been the technical lead for two internet startups and was an options trader on the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. He gained notoriety …

Competitive Balance Ratio (CBR)

Competitive Balance Ratio (CBR) is a metric that reflects team-specific variation in winning percentage over time and league-specific variation. Variation in the CBR explains also explains variation in the annual attendance in professional sports more significantly than other alternatives measures do. Besides attendance numbers, we also think NBA’s TV ratings slump has to do with a low competitive balance ratio …

Correlated Gaussian Winning Percentage

Correlated Gaussian Winning Percentage is the method that relates winning percentage to points scored, points allowed, the standard deviations of points scored and allowed, and the correlation between points scored and allowed.

Daily Updated Ranking of Individual Performance (DRIP)

DRIP, just another new derivative of NBA plus-minus metrics that tries to project player contribution to +/- per 100 possessions on both offense and defense. DRIP specifically uses adjusted +/- values and generates results as ‘DRIP on offense’, ‘DRIP on defense’, and ‘total DRIP’. DRIP calculation is very similar to PIPM and DARKO DPM: box score data, play-by-play data and …

DARKO (DPM)

DARKO, aka Daily Plus-Minus or DPM, is created by Kostya Medvedovsky. DARKO (stands for “Daily Adjusted and Regressed Kalman Optimized“) is a composite predictive metric that uses box score and plus-minus stats. By blending these components in proportion to the number of total possessions of a player, recent performance is weighted more heavily to better predict future game outcomes. Their …

Dean Oliver

Dean Oliver is one the most recognized godfathers in the NBA analytics movement. He’s once been a basketball player, coach, and scout. His longtime website, Journal of Basketball Studies, and subsequent 2003 book, Basketball on Paper, brought him recognition as a principal leader in the field. His research into the importance of pace and possessions, how teamwork affects individual statistics, …

Defense Versus Position (DvP)

Defense Vs. Position helps you identify an undervalued player who would be a favorable matchup based on the opposition he will play tonight. When used in conjunction with other DFS metrics, DvP is one of the most powerful indicators for daily fantasy users. How to Calculate DvP 1) Open a DFS dataset that includes day-by-day fantasy logs in a spreadsheet. …

Defensive Efficiency

Defensive efficiency is the number of points a team allows per 100 possessions. In a game; “defensive efficiency” of a team is equal to offensive efficiency of the opponent team. Refer to the NBA team stats for any season’s defensive efficiency statistics.

Defensive Plus-Minus (DPM)

Defensive Plus-Minus is one kind of a plus-minus metric that measures the difference per 100 possessions in points allowed with a player on the court versus off the court. The accuracy of this measure varies depending upon how often the player is on the floor and whom the player share it with. In most cases, it provides a good indication …

Defensive Rating

Defensive Rating, along with offensive rating, is a player evaluation metric invented by Dean Oliver. Defensive Rating and offensive rating can be calculated by using box score data. The premise of individual defense is that players force defensive stops, preventing the other team from scoring. A player can do that by forcing a missed shot that then gets rebounded by …

Defensive Stop

Defensive stop occurs when a player or team defense regains the ball without allowing the opponent a scoring possession.