Basketball Terms Ipsum

2p% assist percentage (available since the 1964-65 season in the nba); the formula is 100 * ast / (((mp / (tm mp / 5)) * tm fg) - fg). assist percentage is an estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on on the floor. fg% field goal percentage; the formula is fg / fga. ft% four factors dean oliver's "four factors of basketball success"; please see the article four factors for more information. opp ows pace player efficiency rating (available since the 1951-52 season); per is a rating developed by espn.com columnist john hollinger. in john's words, "the per sums up all a player's positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player's performance." please see the article calculating per for more information. also see vaa and var. personal fouls poss pprod sixth man of the year.

Assists effective field goal percentage; the formula is (fg + 0.5 * 3p) / fga. this statistic adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal. for example, suppose player a goes 4 for 10 with 2 threes, while player b goes 5 for 10 with 0 threes. each player would have 10 points from field goals, and thus would have the same effective field goal percentage (50%). ft% per player efficiency rating (available since the 1951-52 season); per is a rating developed by espn.com columnist john hollinger. in john's words, "the per sums up all a player's positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player's performance." please see the article calculating per for more information. also see vaa and var. pprod roy smoy true shooting attempts; the formula is fga + 0.44 * fta. win shares; an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player. please see the article calculating win shares for more information. year that the season occurred. since the nba season is split over two calendar years, the year given is the last year for that season. for example, the year for the 1999-00 season would be 2000..

Defensive rating (available since the 1977-78 season in the nba); for players and teams it is points allowed per 100 posessions. this rating was developed by dean oliver, author of basketball on paper. i will point you to dean's book for complete details. effective field goal percentage; the formula is (fg + 0.5 * 3p) / fga. this statistic adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal. for example, suppose player a goes 4 for 10 with 2 threes, while player b goes 5 for 10 with 0 threes. each player would have 10 points from field goals, and thus would have the same effective field goal percentage (50%). games behind; the formula is ((first w - w) + (l - first l)) / 2, where first w and first l stand for wins and losses by the first place team, respectively. mvp usage percentage (available since the 1977-78 season in the nba); the formula is 100 * ((fga + 0.44 * fta + tov) * (tm mp / 5)) / (mp * (tm fga + 0.44 * tm fta + tm tov)). usage percentage is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor. pythagorean wins; the formula is g * (tm pts14 / (tm pts14 + opp pts14)). the formula was obtained by fitting a logistic regression model with log(tm pts / opp pts) as the explanatory variable. using this formula for all baa, nba, and aba seasons, the root mean-square error (rmse) is 3.14 wins. using an exponent of 16.5 (a common choice), the rmse is 3.48 wins. (note: an exponent of 10 is used for the wnba.).