Beginner's Guide On How To Calculate Player Efficiency Rating

Various metrics can assess a basketball player’s performance throughout a game, season, or career. Although excellence can be subjective and there’s no specific established way to judge an athlete’s performance, several analytics are widely used and accepted throughout the basketball world. For most, using these statistics can give the player, coach, and those concerned a glimpse of the player’s potential contribution or impact to the team. To understand the metrics, here’s a rundown on how to calculate player efficiency rating.

Statistics drive the majority of professional sports leagues. The NBA can also be included in this category, as some of its awards are solely based on stats. Many analytics are made to measure a player’s impact in a game in a sport with many variables and different formulas. 

The NBA measures individual efficiency in four ways: Efficiency (EFF), player efficiency rating (PER), offensive efficiency rating (OER), and defensive efficiency rating (DER). OER  uses the number of points scored per shot taken(plus free throws). The number of points scored per 100 possessions determines the offensive rating. DER is a metric that estimates how many points a given player is likely to allow over 100 possessions.  The paragraphs below explain the two most widely used methods.

Efficiency Metric (EFF)

A common, simple formula used in getting an average stat is the EFF (EFF). This metric is a quicker way for you to know a player’s Efficiency compared to PER. Efficiency pertains to the total value of a player to a basketball team. In this metric, per player statistics are recorded, particularly

• Points
• Rebounds
• Assists
• Steals
• Blocks
• Turnover
• Attempted Shot

One drawback of EFF is that it is highly concentrated on offenses, not much on defense, so one can’t derive the best evaluation on this part. To compute using the EFF metric, here’s the formula.

Basically, what we do here is to add up the positives (in white) minus the negatives (in yellow). For more detailed average stat, you can also do other variations; specifically, EFF per games played (EE/GP); EFF per game time (EFF/48 for NBA and EFF/40 for WNBA AND NCAA). To understand better, here’s a sample computation, or you can also use this online calculator.

A player has 28 points, 4 rebounds, 11 assists, 2 steals, 1 block, 8 missed field goals, 6 missed free throws, 7 turnovers, 10 games played, and 372 minutes played.

EFF = (28 + 4 + 11 + 2 + 1 – 8 – 6 – 7) = 23

EFF/GP = 23 ÷ 3 = 7.66

EFF/48 = (23 ÷ 72) x 48 = 15.33

EFF/40 = (23 ÷ 72) x 40 = 12.77