The Wizards lost a meaningless game to the Milwaukee Bucks, and my observations about it will be somewhat limited because I haven’t been able to watch it yet. I will, because I view every Wizards game at least once whether I want to or not.

In news that will surely be lifechanging for you, I spent the day at a conference learning about some new ways to measure methane and mitigate leaks. Incredibly interesting stuff.

Also, I had some drinks, ate at a mashed potato bar and played shuffleboard well enough that my industry colleagues told me I wasn’t allowed to play anymore. If there’s a Lebron James of tabletop shuffleboard, it might be me. At least in my industry.

Anyway, a few statistical observations from this basically meaningless game:

• Johnny Davis wasn’t bad, and I won’t even qualify it with the “for him” or “for a rookie” caveats. Not great, not bad. Just...solid. He played 37 minutes and 82 possessions and tallied 20 points on nearly league average efficiency, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists. Most encouraging: 2 blocks and 2 steals.
• Kendrick Nunn produced a nice stat line and some video his agent can use to help him secure another contract somewhere — 24 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals in just 23 minutes. Not bad.
• Jay Huff wasn’t bad off the bench — 17 points, 9 rebounds, 2 steals.
• Quenton Jackson shot 6-6 from the free throw line in 23 minutes (not bad) and produced 4 assists to zero turnovers.
• Daniel Gafford was decent overall — 15 points and 7 rebounds in 21 minutes...but also four fouls.
• Corey Kispert missed threes, and was therefore terrible because he does little else. Interesting that he had just 4 three-point attempts and 11 two-point attempts, which suggests the Bucks schemed to run him off the line and force him to drive. It’ll be interesting to watch the game and see what they did.
• Giannis Antetokounmpo may be the best player on the planet, and he had a 28-11-10 triple double, but he was probably the sixth best Bucks player tonight. He shot just 9-16 from the floor, 10-17 from the free throw line, and he committed 8 turnovers. Sloppy.

Back to more important things, here was my best shuffleboard trash talk line of the night as my colleagues made bad shot after worse: “I did better than this with a broken elbow.”

Four Factors

Below are the four factors that decide wins and losses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

Stats & Metrics

Below are a few performance metrics, including the Player Production Average (PPA) Game Score (very similar to the one I used to call Scoreboard Impact Rating). PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, playmaking, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls).

Game Score (GmSC) converts individual production into points on the scoreboard. The scale is the same as points and reflects each player’s total contributions for the game. The lowest possible GmSC is zero.

PPA is a per possession metric designed for larger data sets. In small sample sizes, the numbers can get weird. Reminder: in PPA, 100 is average, higher is better and replacement level is 45. For a single game, replacement level isn’t much use, and I reiterate the caution about small samples sometimes producing weird results.

POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.

ORTG = offensive rating, which is points produced per individual possessions x 100. League average last season was 112.0. Points produced is not the same as points scored. It includes the value of assists and offensive rebounds, as well as sharing credit when receiving an assist.

USG = offensive usage rate. Average is 20%.

ORTG and USG are versions of stats created by Wizards assistant coach Dean Oliver and modified slightly by me. ORTG is an efficiency measure that accounts for the value of shooting, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers. USG includes shooting from the floor and free throw line, offensive rebounds, assists and turnovers.

+PTS = “Plus Points,” this stat is a measure of the points gained or lost by each player based on their efficiency in this game compared to league average efficiency on the same number of possessions. A player with an offensive rating (points produced per possession x 100) of 100 who uses 20 possessions would produce 20 points. If the league average efficiency is 114, the league — on average — would produced 22.8 points in the same 20 possessions. So, the player in this hypothetical would have a +PTS score of -2.8.