What are Your Basketball “Four Factors”?
The start of the basketball analytics revolution was triggered about 20 years ago by Dean Oliver’s book Basketball on Paper, where he analyzed thousands of games and came up with these metrics to predict win/loss success, along with their importance:
- Effective FG % (Shooting) (40%)
- Turnover Pct. (25%)
- Rebounding rate (20%)
- Free Throw Factor (15%)
For your team and level of play, there may be different metrics that better predict success. And since Hoopsalytics has a large number of modern stats, you may discover your unique keys to success using the Stat Analysis tool.
Looking at my various basketball teams throughout the years I’ve been using Hoopsalytics, I’ve found these “factors” to predict wins and losses:
- For some teams, Defensive Points-per-possession (PPP) accurately predicts all wins and losses. This was true in last year’s 27-6 season. (However, the same wasn’t true for offensive PPP. Goes to show that “defense wins championships”).
- On other teams, the best predictors were offensive rebounds and turnovers. But again, not always, as you’ll see below…
Here’s a how-to case study from one of my high school girl’s varsity team, which you can apply to your own teams:
From the Games page, choose Multiple Game Stats, and then the Stat Analysis tool:
Effective Field Goal Percentage (EFG%) appears by default, but you can select from 75+ other stats to see game-by-game comparisons. Here’s how EFG% appears:
In the left column, your lost games are in red, and wins are in green. From here, click on each column header to sort on that stat, and see if you get a cluster of greens and reds. The more clustered they are, the better that stat predicts success.
You can also see a summary from your wins and losses, as well as all games, in the table at the top of this page.
Doing a Stat Analysis by Rebounding percentage (REB% – the percent of all possible rebounds secured by this team) was predictive for this team for all but one game:
Curiously, OREB % and DREB% (offensive and defensive rebounding percent) weren’t as predictive as overall REB%.
You can see that securing over 50% of rebounds is a great goal for this team. (See this article about how to set custom team goals.)
Watch this three-minute video to learn more:
So what are YOUR predictors of success? They may not be what you think, but Hoopsalytics can help you discover them. Especially if you analyze the previous season, or start noodling several games into your season.