Here’s something so wild that when I first saw it (h/t u/ghrghr_) I thought I read it wrong: the list of the top 250 seasons by True Shooting Percentage includes 36 players from this season.
Let me say that again.
36 of the 250 most efficient scoring seasons of all-time are happening right now.
Things have been trending this way for a few years. Last year, Mitchell Robinson set the all-time single season record for True Shooting at 72.6 percent and now this year DeAndre Jordan (73.3 percent) will likely smash it so long as he takes the requisite number of attempts.
The league as a whole has seen a sharp rise in scoring efficiency in recent years. As of this writing, the league-wide True Shooting is 57.2 percent. That’s a little more than a half percentage point higher than last year and five and a half percentage points up from the 2000-01 season.
Since True Shooting takes into account points scored from 2s, 3s, and free throws1, it’s worth quickly reviewing how efficiency on each of those shot types has changed over the years.
The chart above shows the percentage point change in the league average two-point, three-point, free throw, and True Shooting percentage relative to the 2000-01 season. The league average conversion rate on 2s is nearly seven percentage points higher this season than it was 20 years ago. Meanwhile, the league average conversion rate on 3s has also increased, but less noticeably. However, since teams are taking more threes as a share of all their attempts, the rise in three-point efficiency contributes more to the overall increase in league average True Shooting than it might seem.
The majority of the gains in scoring efficiency have been captured in the last five years. In fact, scoring efficiency has increased so much and so quickly in the last couple of years that I haven’t taken a step back to rewire my brain to account for the change. As recently as this season I was still using 60 percent True Shooting as a rule of thumb to quickly distinguish the most efficient scorers from everyone else. That’s not a good rule of thumb anymore.
In 2016, Steph Curry became the first unanimous MVP by averaging 30 points a game while leading the league in True Shooting at 67 percent. One of the things that made Curry’s offensive season that year so special was just how far above the rest of the field he was in terms of scoring efficiency.
While 67 percent True Shooting would still be considered elite this season, it wouldn’t quite pack the punch it did in 2016. This year, there are 85 players2 with a True Shooting above 60 percent compared to just 27 in Curry’s unanimous MVP season.
I think this rise in scoring efficiency also explains why it feels (at least to me) like fewer players are labeled as “chuckers” these days. High volume, low efficiency scorers have been replaced with similarly high volume, slightly (in absolute terms) more efficient scorers. Which is to say, the new Baron Davis looks a lot more like Caris LeVert than you might have realized.
The folks over at Basketball-Reference recognized this issue long before I did because they recently added an “Adjusted Shooting” page to help contextualize scoring efficiency. There, you can view a player’s scoring efficiency relative to league average. For instance, after adjusting for the the league-wide inflation of scoring efficiency, Curry’s 67 percent True Shooting in 2016 would be roughly equivalent to a player with a 71 percent True Shooting this season.
Scoring efficiency inflation at the individual level trickles up to at the team level as well. Last year, the Dallas Mavericks set an NBA record for offensive efficiency by scoring 116.7 points per 100 possessions. This year, there are six teams with an Offensive Rating equal to or higher than last year’s Mavericks team and another two are within striking range. To see how teams rank in offensive and defensive efficiency relative to the league average, you can head over to pbpstats.com.
I’m not here to say that scoring efficiency inflation is good or bad (based on Ben Taylor’s recent interview with Evan Wasch, the EVP of analytics for the NBA, it sounds like the league is happy with it). Rather, the point here is to show how citing a player’s True Shooting or a team’s Offensive Rating without consideration of the overall distribution can be misleading, especially when making comparisons across seasons. Unless you’ve been aware of the rise in scoring efficiency and have been updating your mental heuristics accordingly, you can be fooled into thinking a player or team is having a better season than they really are.
Here’s something so wild that when I first saw it (h/t u/ghrghr_) I thought I read it wrong: the list of the top 250 seasons by True Shooting Percentage includes 36 players from this season.
Let me say that again.
36 of the 250 most efficient scoring seasons of all-time are happening right now.
Things have been trending this way for a few years. Last year, Mitchell Robinson set the all-time single season record for True Shooting at 72.6 percent and now this year DeAndre Jordan (73.3 percent) will likely smash it so long as he takes the requisite number of attempts.
The league as a whole has seen a sharp rise in scoring efficiency in recent years. As of this writing, the league-wide True Shooting is 57.2 percent. That’s a little more than a half percentage point higher than last year and five and a half percentage points up from the 2000-01 season.
Since True Shooting takes into account points scored from 2s, 3s, and free throws1, it’s worth quickly reviewing how efficiency on each of those shot types has changed over the years.
The chart above shows the percentage point change in the league average two-point, three-point, free throw, and True Shooting percentage relative to the 2000-01 season. The league average conversion rate on 2s is nearly seven percentage points higher this season than it was 20 years ago. Meanwhile, the league average conversion rate on 3s has also increased, but less noticeably. However, since teams are taking more threes as a share of all their attempts, the rise in three-point efficiency contributes more to the overall increase in league average True Shooting than it might seem.
The majority of the gains in scoring efficiency have been captured in the last five years. In fact, scoring efficiency has increased so much and so quickly in the last couple of years that I haven’t taken a step back to rewire my brain to account for the change. As recently as this season I was still using 60 percent True Shooting as a rule of thumb to quickly distinguish the most efficient scorers from everyone else. That’s not a good rule of thumb anymore.
In 2016, Steph Curry became the first unanimous MVP by averaging 30 points a game while leading the league in True Shooting at 67 percent. One of the things that made Curry’s offensive season that year so special was just how far above the rest of the field he was in terms of scoring efficiency.
While 67 percent True Shooting would still be considered elite this season, it wouldn’t quite pack the punch it did in 2016. This year, there are 85 players2 with a True Shooting above 60 percent compared to just 27 in Curry’s unanimous MVP season.
I think this rise in scoring efficiency also explains why it feels (at least to me) like fewer players are labeled as “chuckers” these days. High volume, low efficiency scorers have been replaced with similarly high volume, slightly (in absolute terms) more efficient scorers. Which is to say, the new Baron Davis looks a lot more like Caris LeVert than you might have realized.
The folks over at Basketball-Reference recognized this issue long before I did because they recently added an “Adjusted Shooting” page to help contextualize scoring efficiency. There, you can view a player’s scoring efficiency relative to league average. For instance, after adjusting for the the league-wide inflation of scoring efficiency, Curry’s 67 percent True Shooting in 2016 would be roughly equivalent to a player with a 71 percent True Shooting this season.
Scoring efficiency inflation at the individual level trickles up to at the team level as well. Last year, the Dallas Mavericks set an NBA record for offensive efficiency by scoring 116.7 points per 100 possessions. This year, there are six teams with an Offensive Rating equal to or higher than last year’s Mavericks team and another two are within striking range. To see how teams rank in offensive and defensive efficiency relative to the league average, you can head over to pbpstats.com.
I’m not here to say that scoring efficiency inflation is good or bad (based on Ben Taylor’s recent interview with Evan Wasch, the EVP of analytics for the NBA, it sounds like the league is happy with it). Rather, the point here is to show how citing a player’s True Shooting or a team’s Offensive Rating without consideration of the overall distribution can be misleading, especially when making comparisons across seasons. Unless you’ve been aware of the rise in scoring efficiency and have been updating your mental heuristics accordingly, you can be fooled into thinking a player or team is having a better season than they really are.
