People always like to praise a player’s selflessness on the court while at the same time criticizing those who do not share the same virtues. But which players really are “selfish?” I’ve developed a simple measure that will attempt to answer this question.
First, let me describe what I mean by selfish. For the sake of this article, selfish means a player who consistently chooses to shoot instead of setting up plays for others. The player doesn’t need to take a lot of shots or be a high-volume shooter.
To come up with the rating was actually quite simple. First, I divided a player’s total field goal attempts by their number of assists. I then found their ranking among players of their position. Finally, I translated this ranking to a stat on a 0-10 scale.
Simple enough. But before I reveal the numbers, I want to stress that this is a very simple rating system. Because of how basic it is, there will certainly be exceptions to the rule that get misrepresented. Also, don’t forget this is adjusted for position. In reality, most point guards are probably very selfless. But if a point guard has a rating of 8 or 9, that just means he’s more selfish than other floor generals.
To see the numbers for every player, go to:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rXbYUWIumaHKB0pH8G4_ZrQ
Also, here are a few tables that may be of interest:
Rate this post!
I looked at the numbers and for the most part they were pretty in line with what I expected. Nice work
Also, would it be possible to get position averages? because PGs naturally have lower numbers than other positions. Would be interesting to see for example how bad Mike Bibby’s 7+ is vs an average point guard
Thanks for the kind words. Since it’s adjusted for position, the average score for each position is 5.
you should revise the scale to be based on FGAs and ASTs based on touches. some players touch the ball a lot yet don’t shoot or get awarded an assist, yet they are making extra passes to help others score.
Also, this doesn’t include FTAs, does it? Because a FTA might be awarded on a missed FGA. People who shoot a lot of FTs might look less selfish cause they “look” like they are taking less shots.
you can also see how selfish each team is based on the players and their relative minutes played.
good stuff, keep it up.
Wouldn’t you want to relate shots to touches, not assists? What percent of the time when a player has the ball do they shoot it? An assist really has nothing to do with it. Is a player less selfish by making an assist than by making the pass that leads to the assist? Nope.
In fact, you could construe it the opposite, sometimes players force a pass (say from the top of the arch to the post) instead of working it through the wing, which would have a lower chance of turnover. In that case, if a player at the top of the arch successfully makes the unnecessarily risky pass they get an assist, but it was actually a more selfish play than working it through the wing.
Cool idea, though. I’m guessing getting a timestamped record of every time each player touches the ball isn’t really easy to come by…
Tracy McGrady with a 1.56 is what really leapt out at me.
I don’t think it neccessarily means selfish though. Guys like Eddie House, Tyson Chandler (and a lot of other centers) are just recipient of passes at the rim (or in Eddie’s case, has a green light to shoot whenever).
I do however see a lot of rookies and young players (Thorton, Thad Young, Beasley) which I think is the mentality of “i gotta show what I got so I get minutes/paid”
you hit the nail on the head. this is a very simple system.. too crude to tell you anything.. doesn’t take into account shooting efficiencies of pass-receiving players.. or hockey assists..
and how about players who are on the team just to catch and shoot open 3 pters.. or open shots at the rim..? its way way wya too crude to tell u anything significant.
All good and well, except most Wolves fans would HOPE Mike Miller would shoot more than he did. Get selfish Mike.
Some real surprises for me here. Ben Gordon only SG-average-selfish? Ricky Davis incredibly unselfish? And how about every forward on Philly not knowing how to pass? Nice work.
I’d wonder if stats like turnovers or offensive fouls would be useful here too, since both can tend to result from selfish play.
Ben Gordon was one of the most surprising results. If you had asked me one player who would get a 10, I would have said him.
Offensive fouls and turnovers can result from selfish play, but not necessarily. After all, Steve Nash and Jason Kidd turn the ball over quite a bit, but I wouldn’t say it’s because they’re selfish.
Agree with Garron. I understand this is a simple metric so it will have limitations, but calling Eddie House selfish when his main responsibility is to be a spot-up 3 point specialist doesn’t make a lot of sense. Also, you could argue that even though he technically plays PG, he doesn’t usually initiate the offense (Paul Pierce or Ray Allen) so it’s not really logical to compare him to other Point Guards who do.
A couple comments:
- Adding free throws would have been an easy adjustment and something I should have done. I tried to keep the stat simple, but that was plenty easy. My bad.
- Factoring in touches would make more sense but it’s not totally plausible. Even if it was, like I said earlier, I wanted it to be simple.
- Finally, things such as assists sometimes being acts of selfishness may be true. But like I said in the article, there are obviously exceptions to any stat. It would be difficult to account for all those little differences.
Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting!
[...] Nichols outlined a simple measurement of “selfishness” that accounted for shots attempted and assists, which proved useful to the topic at hand. [...]