NBA

5 NBA Stats to Know From the Last Week

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The True Shooting Percentage Leaderboard Is Weird

For the uninitiated, here's what the fine folks at Basketball Reference have to say about True Shooting Percentage: "True shooting percentage (TS%) is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account field goals, three-point field goals, and free throws."

The formula for calculating TS% goes like this: (0.5 x points) / (FGA + 0.475 x FTA). So, y'know, have fun with that.

TS% is a crucial number, so much so that Tyler Gaffney posited in his Claremont College thesis with the snappy title "An Analysis of the Contract Year Phenomenon in the NBA: Do Players Perform Better or Worse" that teams should weigh the stat heavily when deciding a player's salary.

Some of the folks who comprise this early season's top-10 TS% list are already quite content with their bank accounts. Other, probably not as much -- and you can bet if they keep their TS% rolling, they'll bring it into their negotiation session:

Rank Player Team TS% Points
1 Tony Snell MIL .728 10.2
2 Steven Adams OKC .687 12.5
3 LeBron James CLE .680 28.8
4 Otto Porter Jr. WAS .678 18.3
5 Rudy Gobert UTA .669 13.9
6 Kevin Durant GS .662 24.8
7 Stephen Curry GS .659 25.7
8 James Ennis MEM .657 9.3
9 Aaron Gordon ORL .652 19.1
10 Karl-Anthony Towns MIN .645 21.8


James Ennis
will be an unrestricted free agent next summer. Just saying.