NBA Offensive Stats

Types Of NFL Offensive Stats

Points Per Game

The basic offensive information found below will be the points scored per game. This will rank the top scoring offenses in the league down to the bottom. Scoring can be further broken down into offensive output at home, versus on the road. There can be some big discrepancies between the two numbers, which is information that can be used as an advantage.

Shooting Percentage

Shooting percentage is a good way to measure the accuracy of shots and efficiency of shot creation, but it’s not specific enough to be incredibly useful. FG% is too general - split it up between FG% and 3P% and it might get a bit more interesting. However, context is still needed. Here are a couple questions to ask yourself when looking at FG% numbers.

What kind of shots were they? A big guy shooting close to the rim is going to have a high FG%, but might not be able to get in that position all the time. What was happening in the game? Was the team behind in the fourth quarter, causing them to take a bunch of three point shots in an attempt to get back into it? Since teams shoot worse on threes than they do at the rim, that could explain a lower FG% as well. As always, context is king.

Pace Of Play

Pace is the underlying factor in many offensive statistics. The number one thing you’ll want to understand when wagering on NBA games is pace. Pace generally refers to the number of possessions that happen within an average game. This number changes over time - it was monstrous in the 60’s, got lower and lower, and gradually started creeping up again in the 2000’s. You can see this reflected in scoring - games in the early 2000’s were much lower scoring than they are now. Much of this is due to improved efficiency, but a lot is due to increased pace as well.

Obviously, understanding pace is a huge part of betting on NBA over/unders. The US online sportsbooks will be doing their best to handicap those based on pace and offensive efficiency, and you need to do your best as well. Certain teams play fast, and certain teams play slower, and that ends up really mattering both in terms of matchups and in terms of NBA betting.

Offensive Shooting Statistics

Continuing through the categories of offense that you can review, we come to shooting stats: field-goal and free-throw percentages. These are separate, but in general, they relate back to how a team shoots.

But what if you wanted to just look at one number? Well, you can take a look at Effective Field Goal %, which is abbreviated as eFG% and is essentially a measurement of how well someone shoots. This takes into account that 3-pointers are worth more than 2-pointers. Because people shoot worse on 3s than 2s generally, this can skew normal field goal percentage, but it doesn’t skew Effective Field Goal %, which is as close as we have to a measurement of the value of an average shot by a given player.

Another great shooting metric is True Shooting %, which is abbreviated as TS%. It is similar to eFG% in that it takes into account the value of a three-point shot, but TS% also takes into account the value and rate at which a player makes their free throws, making it a comprehensive overview of what the player produces as far as all types of shooting offensively.