Why NBA Players Must Produce in the Margins to Be Great

September 25th, 2012 by Kelly Scaletta Leave a reply »
What constitutes a "great scorer?" An interesting article by Beckley Mason and Tom Haberstroh of ESPN looks at what they call "Extra-Point Percentage" (ExPt%) or essentially, that "third point" is the difference between a merely good and great player. 

In their analysis they look at how often a player either attempts a three-point shot or gets to the charity stripe to measure how often a player is getting an "extra point," which is to say, a third point. A standard field goal is worth two points, but if you can get an "and-one" or a three-point shot, then you get an extra, third point. 

Basketball essentially is a game of possessions. Two teams take turns with the ball. There are certain things you can do to get a couple more possessions during the game, such as manipulating the clock at the end of quarters to get two possessions in a row (the last of one quarter and the first of the next) but really, you're going to end up with the same number of possessions.

So, in the simplest terms, if you can average more points-per-possession than your opponent, you win the game. Maximize your every possession, minimize your opponents every pos ...

Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by

Advertisement

Comments are closed.