Stepping Up

Who increased their scoring rate more than anybody else during the NBA Playoffs? Was it NBA Finals MVP LeBron James, the hot-shooting Danny Green, or an emerging star like Paul George? Actually, none of them came close. The correct answer is a backup point guard for a club that didn’t survive the first round.

Andre Miller upped his points per 40 minutes rate from 14.6 during the regular season to 21.8 in the playoffs. His 7.2 points increase led all players who saw at least 1000 regular season and 100 postseason minutes.

Since much of the media focuses on misleading per game stats, vital details like this get missed. While points per game is never a good metric, it’s even less effective during the playoffs when rotations shorten. Regulars see more minutes per game which can cause per game stats to increase even when per minute production dips. Our simple adjustment eliminates this bias. The top 10 appears below. Among superstar players, Chris Paul posted the largest increase.

		PS P/40	RS P/40	Change
1	Andre Miller	21.8	14.6	+7.2
2	Gerald Green	21.0	15.6	+5.4
3	Carl Landry	23.1	18.6	+4.5
4	Chris Paul	24.5	20.3	+4.1
5	Udonis Haslem	12.3	8.2	+4.1
6	Draymond Green	12.6	8.6	+4.0
7	Gerald Wallace	13.8	10.2	+3.6
8	Francisco Garcia	15.6	12.5	+3.1
9	Lamar Odom	11.2	8.2	+3.0
10	Andre Iguodala	17.8	14.9	+2.8

One more key point: scoring drops during the playoffs because teams play at a slower pace. Among the 105 players who met the criteria, only 38 (36.2 percent) scored more points per 40 minutes in the playoffs. This makes the performances of Miller and Paul even more impressive.