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.

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.

More Than a Box Score

Together these three 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.

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.

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.