Advanced Basketball Statistics Anonymous

My curiosity in advanced statistics began with a question that plagues basketball fans everywhere: why are the Blazers signing unproven players to enormous contracts? These players weren’t stars in the past, and only played marginal roles on their previous teams. But after taking a closer look at their metrics, which is something my peers and even reporters forget to do, I realized that these moves were steals.

While the average NBA fan might just settle for basic statistics such as points per game, assists, and rebounds, I obsess over the advanced. On basketball-reference.com, I constantly check player efficiency ratings, true shooting percentages, and value over replacement, attempting to determine a player’s worth to a team. These statistics capture the complexity and abilities of each player on the court; they reveal the truth that primary statistics can obscure.

My favorite page on basketball-reference.com is the 2015-16 NBA Team Ratings page because teams aren’t merely ranked by their win/loss records but by a holistic evaluation. I use this website because it reflects the power of statistics to clarify reality. Statistics can translate a broad range of disjointed data into a complex set of useful answers. I seek to...