Below are some advanced basketball stats that are searchable with the player and team Stathead tools. If you have any questions about other stat abbreviations or definitions you can't find here, check out our Glossary page at Basketball-Reference or feel free to Contact Us anytime.
BPM - Box Plus/Minus (available since the 1973-74 season in the NBA); a box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions that a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team. Please see the article About Box Plus/Minus (BPM) for more information.
DRtg - Defensive Rating (available since the 1973-74 season in the NBA); for players and teams it is points allowed per 100 posessions. This rating was developed by Dean Oliver, author of Basketball on Paper. Please see the article Calculating Individual Offensive and Defensive Ratings for more information.
DWS - Defensive Win Shares; please see the article Calculating Win Shares for more information.
eFG% - Effective Field Goal Percentage; the formula is (FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA. This statistic adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal. For example, suppose Player A goes 4 for 10 with 2 threes, while Player B goes 5 for 10 with 0 threes. Each player would have 10 points from field goals, and thus would have the same effective field goal percentage (50%).
GmSc - Game Score; the formula is PTS + 0.4 * FG - 0.7 * FGA - 0.4*(FTA - FT) + 0.7 * ORB + 0.3 * DRB + STL + 0.7 * AST + 0.7 * BLK - 0.4 * PF - TOV. Game Score was created by John Hollinger to give a rough measure of a player's productivity for a single game. The scale is similar to that of points scored, (40 is an outstanding performance, 10 is an average performance, etc.).
ORtg - Offensive Rating (available since the 1977-78 season in the NBA); for players it is points produced per 100 posessions, while for teams it is points scored per 100 possessions. This rating was developed by Dean Oliver, author of Basketball on Paper. Please see the article Calculating Individual Offensive and Defensive Ratings for more information.
OWS - Offensive Win Shares; please see the article Calculating Win Shares for more information.
PACE - Pace Factor (available since the 1973-74 season in the NBA); the formula is 48 * ((Tm Poss + Opp Poss) / (2 * (Tm MP / 5))). Pace factor is an estimate of the number of possessions per 48 minutes by a team.
PER - Player Efficiency Rating (available since the 1951-52 season); PER is a rating developed by ESPN.com columnist John Hollinger. In John's words, "The PER sums up all a player's positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player's performance." Please see the article Calculating PER for more information.
SRS - Simple Rating System; a rating that takes into account average point differential and strength of schedule. The rating is denominated in points above/below average, where zero is average. My colleague Doug Drinen of Pro-Football-Reference.com has written a great explanation of this method.
TS% - True Shooting Percentage; the formula is PTS / (2 * TSA). True shooting percentage is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.
USG% - Usage Percentage (available since the 1977-78 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * ((FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV) * (Tm MP / 5)) / (MP * (Tm FGA + 0.44 * Tm FTA + Tm TOV)). Usage percentage is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor.
WS - Win Shares; an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player. Please see the article Calculating Win Shares for more information.