Understanding the data

What is
Playtype
Data?

Playtype data breaks down a player's offensive and defensive actions into specific categories, giving you a deeper look at how players actually operate on the court.

The basics

Categories & Actions

Each possession a player is involved in gets assigned to a playtype, such as pick-and-roll ball handler, isolation, spot-up shooting, post-up, transition, and more. This tells you exactly what kind of actions a player runs and defends most frequently.

Freq%
Frequency
How often a player is involved in that playtype as a percentage of their total possessions.
PPP
Points Per Possession
How many points are generated on average each time that playtype is run, a direct measure of efficiency.
Pctl
Percentile
How a player's efficiency ranks compared to all other players. Higher is better.
FT%
Free Throw Frequency
How often that playtype results in a shooting foul and trip to the free throw line.
TOV%
Turnover Frequency
How often that playtype ends in a turnover instead of a shot attempt or foul drawn.
SF%
Shooting Foul Frequency
How often the possession draws a shooting foul specifically, distinct from the free throws it produces.
AND1%
And-One Frequency
How often that playtype results in a made basket plus a shooting foul, an and-one opportunity.

On player pages, click any slice of the playtype frequency chart to see that playtype's FT%, TOV%, SF% and AND1% breakdown, on top of its overall PPP and percentile.

Reading the numbers

More Than a Box Score

Together these numbers tell you not just what a player does, but how well and how often they do it. A player might be an elite isolation scorer but rarely use it, or rely heavily on spot-up opportunities while being merely average at converting them. Playtype data surfaces those nuances that traditional box score stats simply can't.

A word of caution: playtype data does not tell you how good a player is overall. A role player and a superstar can both post elite percentiles in a given playtype. What it does tell you is what a player does best and where they are most comfortable operating on the court.

Beyond playtypes

Advanced Boxscore

Alongside playtype data, player pages include an advanced boxscore: usage rate, assist rate, rebound rate, turnover rate, block rate and steal rate. These describe a player's overall involvement and role, independent of any single playtype.

One of these, FOUL%, is not an official Basketball Reference stat. We calculate it ourselves using the same formula as AST%, STL% and BLK%: a player's individual fouls relative to their team's fouls while on the court, adjusted for pace.

Beyond playtypes

Shooting

The Shooting page covers shot selection and mechanics: two-point and three-point splits, free throw shooting, effective field goal percentage, shot quality, and how a player's shot volume compares to the rest of their team.

Where relevant, shooting efficiency is also shown relative to the league average for that season, so a 39% three-point season can be read in context rather than in isolation.

Data coverage

Since 2016

Playtype tracking data has only been available since the 2015-16 season. As a result, career statistics on this site reflect each player's career from 2016 onwards, not their full career. For players who were active before 2016, earlier seasons are not included in their career averages.

Where the data comes from

Our Sources

NBA.com
All playtype data, frequency, PPP and percentile, is sourced directly from the NBA's official tracking data.
Basketball Reference
Traditional per game and per 75 possession table stats are sourced from Basketball Reference, covering regular season and playoff splits.