Wizards 2019-20 — Final PPA Numbers

As the NBA Finals march towards crowning the Los Angeles Lakers — limping a bit because of the foot injury to Goran Dragic and the shoulder injury to Bam Adebayo — and I read John Heiser’s excellent “Deal of the Day” series, I realize I’ve yet to post full-season results from my Player Production Average (PPA) metric.

PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do to help a team win (scoring, rebounding, play-making, defending) and debits them for things that hurt (missing shots, committing turnovers, fouling and bad defense). In PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45.

PPA is pace neutral, accounts for defense, includes a “degree of difficulty” factor, and a position/role adjustment.

A note: this is probably the last time you’ll see PPA in its current iteration. I’ve been working on an update, which I’ll likely begin using next season. The coefficients have always floated depending on league environment, but they’ll be changing a bit more in PPA 2.0. The biggest changes will how I calculate the “degree of difficulty” factor and account for defense. I’ll talk more about that when I start using it.

At this point, the individual Wizards have been extensively analyzed. The Bullets Forever team posted evaluations of every player, including Ian Mahinmi, who won’t be back. The full season PPA numbers for the Wizards are below. Additional information about PPA and the ratings for the entire league are here.

Ratings for some of the players who missed the bubble did change. Beal’s PPA fell a couple points, as did Bertans’. Mathews score came down as well. That’s because PPA compares each player’s performance to league average. Bubble play changed “average” in the NBA while some players weren’t participating. That was enough to nudge their scores down a bit.