Author: Nathan Andriessen, nathanandriessen2023@u.northwestern.edu, Weinberg, 2023

This is the second article in a series about advanced basketball statistics. The first article on individual statistics can be found here. 

The 2020-2021 NBA season is now in full swing; though many things about the league are different now in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing has most definitely remained the same: scoring is king. The top 5 single-season offensive ratings in history (calculated since the 1973-1974 season) are all currently held by this season’s teams (via statmuse.com), outpacing the likes of the Showtime Lakers, Jordan-led Bulls, and the Warriors dynasty, as we are halfway through the season. Other than offensive rating, there are other metrics that can be used to measure team performance, and this article will introduce a few of them. 

Offensive Rating

Like Player Efficiency Rating, Offensive/Defensive rating is probably the most used advanced statistic when directly comparing teams. It’s generally calculated as points scored by a team per 100 possessions. This is a general formula for offensive rating that can be used as a preliminary statistic for measuring team scoring. Statistician Dean Oliver did derive a formula for offensive rating that includes some more variables but using the formula above yields roughly the same result. It is also important to note that like most statistics, Offensive rating is skewed by opponents. Not every team plays against the same team the same number of times due to the NBA’s scheduling system, so that is an additional factor to consider when looking at offensive rating. 

Defensive Rating

Defensive rating is the other half of Offensive rating. Generally calculated by points allowed by a team per 100 possessions.

I could not find Dean Oliver’s ‘advanced’ Defensive rating formula, but as the Offensive rating formula above works as a preliminary statistic for team scoring, this Defensive rating formula works the same way. As previously mentioned, the top 5 offensive ratings since the 1973-1974 season are teams from this season, so we would expect some of the worst defensive ratings this season too, which is true. The Kings, Blazers, and Pelicans rank 1st, 3rd, and 4th respectively in the all-time rankings. 

Pace Factor

Pace factor is also an interesting statistic to look at. Often used interchangeably with ‘tempo’, pace measures the number of possessions a team has in an NBA game. The formula is as follows:

Team possessions are the number of times that a team gets the ball on offense and end when the team scores points, commits a turnover or commits a foul. Opponent possessions are measured the same way for the opposing team. Team minutes played are the total amount of minutes played by the team’s players. In a regulation game, this number would be 240, but in an overtime game, this number goes up depending on the number of overtime periods played. Pace has been on the rise league-wide, which is a factor behind why team Points Per Game are up. However, team offensive rating, which is normalized to points per 100 possessions is also up (hence eliminating the role of pace in calculating offenses), which indicates that there are other reasons why scoring is up overall. 

Pythagorean Wins

This is not really an advanced statistic, but I think it’s really quite interesting and warrants a spot in this article. Pythagorean wins is a metric adopted from baseball that provides a “predicted” amount of wins a team has based on points scored and points allowed. Ex-Houston Rockets Executive Daryl Morey was the first to derive a formula for Pythagorean Wins in Basketball. His formula is: 

The exponent of 13.91 is what Daryl Morey found to be what he felt to be the best exponent to measure team success. Another noted Basketball statistician, John Hollinger, uses 16.5 as his exponent instead. It should be clear too that Pythagorean Wins ignores the context of points scored, so close wins at the buzzer are kind of “outliers” in terms of Pythagorean Wins, but it’s a fun little metric to look at nonetheless. 

Transferable Individual Statistics

The previous article in this series focused on some individual statistics: effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%), True Shooting Percentage (TS%), On-Court/Off-Court Plus-Minus, and Player Efficiency Rating. Of those, eFG% and TS% can be adapted to the team as a whole. 

As with the previous article, this was a quick rundown of some team Basketball statistics that I singled out. Again, I encourage readers to read more into advanced team statistics as there are really in-depth ones that I can’t really explain quickly. Again, statistics should always be looked at with context in mind. Simply using the numbers as an end-all-be-all will result in poor analysis.

All formulas and statistics sourced from basketball-reference.com and statmuse.com