Spending more time with the SportVU player tracking data on NBA.com, I became particularly interested in the “Touches” section. A touch is any time a player possesses the ball. It might be an isolation play, or it might be an instantaneous touch pass to an open shooter. This gives a more accurate idea of the involvement of a player within their respective team’s offense; before SportVU, only Usage Rates and Team Possessions were available, both of which are estimates at their core.

Using common sense, we know that a player’s possession of the ball can end in one of six ways:

1. A field goal attempt

2. A pass

3. A turnover

4. A drawn foul

5. Off the ball foul

6. End of quarter/timeout called

As a result, we can use each of these individual statistics in conjunction with the total touches to calculate the percentage of times that a player is shooting, passing, etc. The eye test is always an option for determining the biggest shot-jackers of the league. But which players are statistically spending the most of their touches shooting the ball? Which are the most passive, or the most turnover prone? I calculated these percentages for every player in the league that had played in more than 30 games and greater than 20 minutes per game (almost exactly 200 players). I want to leave most of the interpretation up to you, but I will append a few notes to each table on my personal impressions on the data.

The Shot-Jackers

Top Players Shoot% Bottom Players Shoot% Klay Thompson (GSW) 0.402 Pablo Prigioni (NYK) 0.062 Nick Young (LAL) 0.338 Josh McRoberts (CHA) 0.092 Al Jefferson (CHA) 0.331 Courtney Lee (MEM) 0.093 Marcus Thornton (SAC) 0.329 Ricky Rubio (MIN) 0.096 Nikola Pekovic (MIN) 0.328 Gerald Wallace (BOS) 0.100 Kevin Martin (MIN) 0.322 Mario Chalmers (MIA) 0.111 Eric Gordon (NOP) 0.319 Kirk Hinrich (CHI) 0.113 Jeremy Lamb (OKC) 0.312 DeAndre Jordan (LAC) 0.119 Terrence Ross (TOR) 0.309278351 Shaun Livingston (BKN) 0.120 Carmelo Anthony (NYK) 0.304409673 Joakim Noah (CHI) 0.122 Rodney Stuckey (DET) 0.302325581 Ekpe Udoh (MIL) 0.125

The top of the league list in shooting percentage actually features a nice diversity of players. There are some catch-and-shoot players doing exactly their jobs – namely Klay Thompson and Jeremy Lamb. There is a post player in Al Jefferson and a down-low threat in Pekovic. Carmelo Anthony confirms many folks’ eye test by cracking the top ten – though who can blame him for playing hero ball on the current Knicks squad? For those wondering – Rudy Gay makes the list at 16 and Kevin Durant at 19.

On the flip side, some of the most reluctant shooters in the league are facilitating point guards. Rubio – possibly the worst shooter ever – smartly hardly ever shoots anymore. There are also some passing big men in Joakim Noah and DeAndre Jordan. Noah is a main facilitator in the Bulls offense, while most of the plays that Jordan is involved in offensively find him at the top of the key to open up the lane (and he sure is not going to shoot any threes).

The Biggest Passers

Top Players Pass% Bottom Players Pass% D.J. Augustin (CHI) 0.938 Klay Thompson (GSW) 0.509 Pablo Prigioni (NYK) 0.881 Nick Young (LAL) 0.550 Josh McRoberts (CHA) 0.875 Kevin Durant (OKC) 0.563 Shane Battier (MIA) 0.840 Eric Gordon (NOP) 0.564 Jose Calderon (DAL) 0.829 Nikola Pekovic (MIN) 0.574 Ricky Rubio (MIN) 0.818 DeMar DeRozan (TOR) 0.578 Kirk Hinrich (CHI) 0.813 Al Jefferson (CHA) 0.579 George Hill (IND) 0.810 Carmelo Anthony (NYK) 0.586 Gerald Wallace (BOS) 0.809 Rodney Stuckey (DET) 0.587 Anderson Varejao (CLE) 0.807 Kevin Martin (MIN) 0.593 Joakim Noah (CHI) 0.806 Rudy Gay (SAC) 0.597

You’ll notice that these two lists are mostly the inverse of the top and bottom shooting lists. This is because there is mainly a struggle between a player’s passing and their shooting – the vast majority of a player’s possessions end in shooting the ball or passing the ball. Most notably, Kevin Durant jumps to the spot of the third worst player at giving up the ball. However, he is an extremely efficient passer in that limited number of passes, which I calculated in my last article on Passing Efficiency.

Most and Least Turnovers:

Top Players TO% Bottom Players TO% Ty Lawson (DEN) 0.068 Shane Battier (MIA) 0.006 Rudy Gay (SAC) 0.056 Courtney Lee (MEM) 0.011 Tony Wroten (PHI) 0.055 Josh McRoberts (CHA) 0.014 DeMarcus Cousins (SAC) 0.054 Tayshaun Prince (MEM) 0.016 James Harden (HOU) 0.053 Jose Calderon (DAL) 0.016 Tyreke Evans (NOP) 0.053 Pablo Prigioni (NYK) 0.016 Dwight Howard (HOU) 0.053 Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (DET) 0.016 Kevin Durant (OKC) 0.051 Anthony Tolliver (CHA) 0.017 Dwyane Wade (MIA) 0.051 Shawne Williams (LAL) 0.018 Eric Gordon (NOP) 0.050 Patrick Beverley (HOU) 0.018 Dion Waiters (CLE) 0.050 Jason Smith (NOP) 0.018

Some of the top players in the league are also the most turnover prone. There is a well-known oddity in the league where some of the top players in the league rack up the most turnovers (a big knock on LeBron James), though it has to be taken into consideration that these players are also holding the ball for vast amounts of time throughout the game. However, it would appear that some of these top players really are sloppy with the ball (namely James Harden, Kevin Durant, Dwyane Wade). In addition, I found Ty Lawson to be a surprise; I felt a little let down by him after praising him so heavily for topping the league in Passing Efficiency. Though Lawson is leading the league in Passing Efficiency, he is also turning the ball over the most, percentage-wise. I think that this is indicative on his depleted team relying on him heavily to do all of the playmaking for his team, which is going to lead to a ton of assists but also a bunch of turnovers. And a quick shout out to Shane Battier, proving that he might be the ultimate role player by not turning the ball over and playing great defense.

Points per Touch

Finally, we can calculate the number of points per touch a player is producing by taking their points scored, points catalyzed by passing, and turnovers into account. NBA.com has its own metric for points per touch, however this only takes the points scored into account. We can find a much more accurate measure of a player’s impact by summing their points scored and points catalyzed, while subtracting the points lost due to the turnovers (found by multiplying the player’s number of turnovers by the number of points their team gives up per turnover).

Top Players Total PTs Touches per game Points per Touch Kevin Durant (OKC) 43.71 68 0.643 Klay Thompson (GSW) 23.89 39.3 0.608 Tyreke Evans (NOP) 22.66 39.3 0.577 LeBron James (MIA) 41.41 76.2 0.543 Eric Gordon (NOP) 22.36 41.7 0.536 JJ Redick (LAC) 20.87 39 0.533 Stephen Curry (GSW) 44.24 83.4 0.530 Manu Ginobili (SAS) 22.28 42 0.530 James Harden (HOU) 36.09 69.2 0.521 DeMar DeRozan (TOR) 31.45 61.4 0.512 Jamal Crawford (LAC) 25.79 50.8 0.508

Bottom Players Total PTs Touches per game PPT Ekpe Udoh (MIL) 5.29 28.8 0.184 Shawne Williams (LAL) 7.33 33.6 0.218 Josh McRoberts (CHA) 16.88 76.8 0.220 Kevin Garnett (BKN) 10.35 45.3 0.229 Shane Battier (MIA) 7.18 31.3 0.229 DeAndre Jordan (LAC) 11.93 51.2 0.233 Jason Smith (NOP) 11.80 49.3 0.239 Jason Thompson (SAC) 9.38 37.7 0.249 Tayshaun Prince (MEM) 9.63 38.5 0.250 Pablo Prigioni (NYK) 12.21 48.7 0.251 Ersan Ilyasova (MIL) 13.15 51.9 0.253

Among the highest PPT marks are some of the league’s best players – including MVP candidates Kevin Durant and LeBron James. Also notice that the Warriors, Clippers, and Pelicans all have two players in the top ten. Both the Warriors and Clippers feature two isolation/pull-up specialists on the list – Steph Curry and Jamal Crawford, respectively. Some of our most shooting-phobic players are at the bottom of the list, such as Prigioni and Jordan. Personally, I had assumed that Prigioni would have a respectable mark to justify his high percentage of passing, but it seems his number of passes is great enough to outweigh any point contributions he is providing.

A final takeaway: some of the league’s biggest shot-jackers find themselves on the highest PPT list, such as Eric Gordon, Klay Thompson, and Kevin Durant. This is due to a little known secret that no NBA player must ever learn: shooting the ball is virtually always a more efficient use of a possession than passing it. The league average in Passing Efficiency is 0.1775 points per pass. To eclipse this mark, all a player would have to do would be to shoot 8.8% on two point field goals, or 6% on threes (which basically any player in the league could do, easily). Of course, this is an oversimplification; ball movement frees up shooters, and an offense can’t function without sharing the ball around. However, this does explain the correlation between high percentages of shooting and high amounts of points being generated per touch. I think this makes the performances of players that are scoring and passing very impressive (namely LeBron James, Manu Ginoboli, and Steph Curry).

For those wondering about the fouls drawn – this percentage is hard to calculate due to a lack of data on And-1’s, technical foul shots taken, and foul shots due to being fouled off the ball. Without this data, it is impossible to determine what percentage of a player’s foul shots were involved with the termination of a possession. For example, Dwight Howard and Kevin Durant were calculated to be the players drawing the highest number of shooting fouls, but these players have also been among the league’s tops in And-1’s drawn in years past. In short, it is currently unknown which players draw the most pure shooting fouls.