NBA Player Power Rankings – THE NBA PPR

Last year I wrote my first Python algorithm to evaluate NBA Player effectiveness.  I decided enough games had been played this year to update my code and feed it some new data…

Box score or traditional stats don’t do a great job evaluating NBA player performance.   Is a player that averages 30 points per game performing well if he averages 40 attempts and 8 turnovers a game? How does his defensive performance figure in?

I wanted to create a better basketball metric.

NBA Real Plus Minus and similar systems try to figure out all aspects of a players “estimated on-court impact” taking in to account teammates, opponents and other factors.

My system works in a similar manner and follows other conventions like Hollinger’s rule that players have to be on pace to play 500 or more minutes.

The PPR relies heavily on WINS.  Much like RPM Wins and Hollinger’s estimated wins added the PPR rates players on how much they contribute towards their team wins over a season.

JANUARY 2019 NBA PLAYER POWER RANKINGS (NBA PPR) TOP 25

	RANKING	PLAYER	TEAM	POS
1	0.98	Anthony Davis	NO	PF
2	0.97	James Harden	HOU	PG
3	0.87	Paul George	OKC	SF
4	0.84	Nikola Jokic	DEN	C
5	0.83	LeBron James	LAL	SF
6	0.83	Giannis Antetokounmpo	MIL	PF
7	0.82	Kevin Durant	GS	SF
8	0.82	Nikola Vucevic	ORL	C
9	0.78	Kyrie Irving	BOS	PG
10	0.76	Stephen Curry	GS	PG
11	0.73	Joel Embiid	PHI	C
12	0.73	Damian Lillard	POR	PG
13	0.72	Rudy Gobert	UTAH	C
14	0.67	Kawhi Leonard	TOR	SF
15	0.67	Jusuf Nurkic	POR	C
16	0.66	Kemba Walker	CHA	PG
17	0.64	Karl-Anthony Towns	MIN	C
18	0.61	Mike Conley	MEM	PG
19	0.60	Jrue Holiday	NO	PG
20	0.59	Danilo Gallinari	LAC	SF
21	0.57	Kyle Lowry	TOR	PG
22	0.57	Ben Simmons	PHI	PG
23	0.57	Jimmy Butler	MIN/PHI	SG
24	0.56	Blake Griffin	DET	PF
25	0.55	Russell Westbrook	OKC	PG

Anthony Davis is so good, he is literally worth 2 average, replacement level players. James Harden is almost as good, and nobody else is that close.

Shooting guard is a dying position. You have to go all the way down to number 23 before you get to Jimmy Butler as the highest ranking SG. There are eight point guards before Butler.

NBA PPR ALL PRO

PG:	James Harden
SG:	Jimmy Butler
SF:	Paul George
PF:	Anthony Davis
C:	Nikola Jokic

Giannis Antetokounmpo at #6 is the highest rated player in the East. Not only are the top five rated players in the West, seven of the top ten players are in the Western Conference.

Feel free to get in touch with me if you are interested in how I came up with these numbers, if you want the entire top 100, or if you have some data you want analyzed.

Post a comment if you think the rankings are incorrect…