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Are the most efficient players the most consistent?

June 23, 2008

Last week, I asked “Do Consistent Minutes make a Player Consistent?” and the stats revealed an interesting, but not surprising conclusion.

“Looking at those numbers above, one can make a good argument that guys who get the most consistent minutes score more consistently. Even for players who play less than 10 minutes per game, there is a moderate correlation. It’s really intriguing when you look at the 30 or more category. We might assume that guys who are playing 30 or more minutes must be pretty consistent as a group to earn that kind of time, but the numbers show that the more consistent their burn the most consistent their scoring is.”

The topic generated an interesting discussion over at ClutchCity and actually created more questions than answers, prompting me to follow up on it this week. A lot of people were interested in how consistency correlated with efficiency. It would make sense that more efficient players were more consistent, but is this actually the case? I decided to check the correlation between consistency and a few other stats:

  • TS% - True Shooting Percentage. This formula adjusts for three-point shots and free throw attempts to give us a more accurate shooting percentage. It is often used as a measure of a player’s efficiency. The formula is PTS / (2 * (FGA + 0.44 * FTA)).
  • eFG% - Effective Field Goal Percentage. Like TS%, this metric adjusts for three-point shots, however it does not consider free throw attempts. It is also used to measure a player’s efficiency. The formula is (FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA
  • FT Rate - Free Throw Rate. This is a measure of a player’s ability to draw fouls. The formula is FTA/FGA.

So, basically we are asking if efficiency and/or the ability to draw fouls help make a player consistent.

After putting together all the numbers, the first thing I did was immediately drop all players who played less than 40 games last season. It just wouldn’t make sense to include players who possibly had very limited playing time. Then, I worked out the correlations dividing the players up into 4 groups based on their Points Per 48 Minutes averages. Note that a lower coefficient of variation indicates a more consistent player so that’s why we get negative correlation numbers. Here’s the data:


 TS% eFG% FT Rate
Bottom 25% Pts/48 -0.46 -0.41 0.06
25-50% Pts/48 -0.24 -0.3 0.16
50-75% Pts/48 -0.33 -0.29 -0.28
Top 25% Pts/48 -0.11 0.07 -0.21

The main thing that stands out here are the trends. Both efficiency measures become less and less correlated with consistency as we look at higher scorers. The opposite happens with FT Rate although neither the correlations nor the trend is as strong. So, what does this mean?

Well, what I see here are two different ways players are consistent. For the top scorers, it is less important that they be efficient in order to be consistent, but more important they draw fouls and get to the line. For the lower scorers, they need to be efficient to be consistent players. This makes sense intuitively. All top scorers have off-nights and the difference between struggling to get 20 points and building a 3-18 brick house with 7 points has a lot to do with the player’s ability to get to the line. The smart, consistent player will put his head down, go to the basket, and draw a foul while the inexperienced scorer will keep heaving jumpers or stop playing altogether. It’s a little bit different for the players who don’t score a whole lot because they don’t get many touches. These guys need to find their own shots by rebounding and being in the right spots to get easy buckets. Not surprisingly then, the players with high efficiency ratings who usually get a lot of easy buckets are also the most consistent among lower scoring players.

The data above doesn’t lead us to an obvious conclusion so this is up for debate. Agree? Disagree?

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Written by HoopsAvenue · Filed Under NBA Stats 

Comments

One Response to “Are the most efficient players the most consistent?”

  1. Mountain on June 26th, 2008 2:51 pm

    Basically agree with what you said.

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