The Stat Nerd’s Top Scorers — Jan. 27
Welcome back to my biweekly top scorer power rankings. As a reminder, these are the top scorers by way of True Shooting Percentage, filtering out players who have played less than half of their potential games; players with usage rates less than 20 percent; and players who play less than 20 minutes per game. I have written in depth about the True Shooting Percentage statistic, here, and explain the reason for the specific filters, here.
Also, I decided to add a “Scoring Rating” to the rankings this week. True Shooting Percentage as a statistic is essentially an estimate of points per scoring try. The estimate is cut in half a) because it makes the stat look more like a percentage (even though it is not by any means; don’t tell anybody) and b) because the points per weighted shot statistic (TS% multiplied by two) is somewhat of an arbitrary number to a casual statistic observer. So I decided to avoid the “arbitrary number” problem, not by cutting Points Per Weighted hot in half, but by multiplying the per weighted shots by a certain number of scoring tries — just like Offensive and Defensive rating statistics do; multiplying a per possession stat by 100 possessions. All that to say, the Scoring Rating is points scored per 20 scoring tries — around the number a shots a first option on most teams may get up. Here are the rankings:
| Rk | Player | G | TS% | Scoring Rating | USG% | MPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LeBron James | 43 | 0.659 | 26.4 | 29.9 | 36.9 |
| 2 | Kevin Durant | 44 | 0.643 | 25.7 | 31.9 | 38.0 |
| 3 | Chris Bosh | 43 | 0.613 | 24.5 | 23.3 | 31.0 |
| 4 | J.J. Redick | 25 | 0.603 | 24.1 | 22.6 | 29.0 |
| 5 | James Harden | 40 | 0.593 | 23.7 | 27.3 | 38.6 |
| 6 | Arron Afflalo | 41 | 0.589 | 23.6 | 24.0 | 37.3 |
| 7 | Paul George | 43 | 0.589 | 23.6 | 28.4 | 36.3 |
| 8 | Goran Dragic | 40 | 0.588 | 23.5 | 24.1 | 34.9 |
| 9 | Al Horford | 29 | 0.588 | 23.5 | 24.6 | 33.0 |
| 10 | Eric Bledsoe | 24 | 0.587 | 23.5 | 24.3 | 33.5 |
| 11 | Stephen Curry | 42 | 0.584 | 23.4 | 28.6 | 37.8 |
| 12 | Kevin Love | 42 | 0.584 | 23.4 | 27.4 | 36.0 |
| 13 | Dirk Nowitzki | 44 | 0.584 | 23.4 | 27.3 | 32.4 |
| 14 | Blake Griffin | 46 | 0.583 | 23.3 | 27.4 | 36.3 |
| 15 | Dwight Howard | 46 | 0.583 | 23.3 | 24.1 | 34.0 |
| 16 | Jeremy Lin | 36 | 0.583 | 23.3 | 20.3 | 30.5 |
| 17 | Isaiah Thomas | 43 | 0.581 | 23.2 | 26.4 | 33.5 |
| 18 | Darren Collison | 46 | 0.580 | 23.2 | 19.6 | 22.3 |
| 19 | Chris Paul | 34 | 0.578 | 23.1 | 25.0 | 34.6 |
| 20 | Dwyane Wade | 31 | 0.578 | 23.1 | 27.1 | 33.0 |
| 21 | Deron Williams | 26 | 0.578 | 23.1 | 21.8 | 30.4 |
| 22 | Manu Ginobili | 41 | 0.577 | 23.1 | 23.9 | 24.0 |
| 23 | Kyle Lowry | 43 | 0.577 | 23.1 | 20.0 | 36.3 |
| 24 | Tony Parker | 40 | 0.575 | 23.0 | 26.5 | 31.3 |
| 25 | Nikola Pekovic | 43 | 0.575 | 23.0 | 22.3 | 33.1 |
Things To Note: Tony Parker re-enters the top 25 and Nikola Pekovic makes an appearance. Kevin Durant’s recent scoring binge has closed the gap between Durant and LeBron and will be interesting if Durant can catch LeBron at some point this season. Steph Curry and Arron Afflalo have returned to form as far their scoring efficiency recently and a result have moved back up to the upper tier of the list. And lastly, I wanted to give a shout out to Deron Williams. His career has been much maligned over the last few seasons, but he has been a consistent part of these rankings this year — at least when he meets the game requirements.