How Many Points is Your Player Worth? (Rev. 2)
Arturo Galletti is the Co-editor and Director of Analytics for the Wages of Wins Network. He is an Electrical Engineer with General Electric in the lovely isle of Puerto Rico, where he keeps his production lines running by day and night (and weekends) and works on sport analysis with his free time.
The Wins Produced metric works great when looking over how much a player helped our hurt your team for a season or over their career. When trying to discuss game to game though it can be a little abstract. Luckily the Wins Produced formula is all about converting points (or the difference in points using efficiency differential) to wins so what if we convert wins back to points? It’s easy enough to do with the following formula.
Point Margin = 31 .0 (Wins Produced-Wins Produced by an Average player)
(Editor Arturo’s Note: I screwed this up again :-) . Fixed now)
Basically the difference in Wins Produced for a player versus an average player can be mapped directly to point margin (go here if you want the full detail behind that equation). Let’s illustrate this as well (for simplicity I’m using .100 WP48 as the player average, it’s actually .099). Here’s a break down of how that works on a minute by minute basis.
Trotting out a star (0.250 WP48) is like spotting your team 4-5 points. Trotting out a player like Bargnani? Just the opposite. Trotting out an average player doesn’t gain you any points, but it doesn’t lose you any either.
For quick review of how the best players are helping their team here are the top 30 players, in terms of Point Margin per game.
| Name | Team | G | MP | PM | PM/G |
| Kevin Love | MIN | 73 | 2611 | 612.3 | 8.4 |
| Dwight Howard | ORL | 78 | 2935 | 571.5 | 7.3 |
| LeBron James | MIA | 79 | 3063 | 505.2 | 6.4 |
| Chris Paul | NOH | 80 | 2880 | 463.9 | 5.8 |
| Dwyane Wade | MIA | 76 | 2824 | 380.7 | 5.0 |
| Zach Randolph | MEM | 75 | 2724 | 339.0 | 4.5 |
| Kevin Garnett | BOS | 71 | 2220 | 298.6 | 4.2 |
| Kris Humphries | NJN | 74 | 2061 | 305.1 | 4.1 |
| Pau Gasol | LAL | 82 | 3037 | 337.0 | 4.1 |
| Andrew Bynum | LAL | 54 | 1500 | 210.8 | 3.9 |
| Marcus Camby | POR | 59 | 1540 | 227.3 | 3.9 |
| Joakim Noah | CHI | 48 | 1576 | 183.7 | 3.8 |
| Rajon Rondo | BOS | 68 | 2527 | 260.2 | 3.8 |
| Steve Nash | PHO | 75 | 2497 | 285.8 | 3.8 |
| Reggie Evans | TOR | 30 | 798 | 113.2 | 3.8 |
| Andre Iguodala | PHI | 67 | 2469 | 238.1 | 3.6 |
| Al Horford | ATL | 77 | 2704 | 272.0 | 3.5 |
| Tim Duncan | SAS | 76 | 2156 | 266.1 | 3.5 |
| Blake Griffin | LAC | 82 | 3112 | 279.3 | 3.4 |
| Tyson Chandler | DAL | 74 | 2059 | 250.0 | 3.4 |
| Paul Pierce | BOS | 80 | 2774 | 256.1 | 3.2 |
| Landry Fields | NYK | 82 | 2541 | 249.4 | 3.0 |
| Lamar Odom | LAL | 82 | 2639 | 249.2 | 3.0 |
| Kevin Durant | OKC | 78 | 3038 | 232.3 | 3.0 |
| Jason Kidd | DAL | 80 | 2653 | 232.2 | 2.9 |
| Deron Williams | UTA | 65 | 2465 | 178.1 | 2.7 |
| Manu Ginobili | SAS | 80 | 2426 | 206.7 | 2.6 |
| Andrew Bogut | MIL | 65 | 2297 | 160.2 | 2.5 |
| Nene Hilario | DEN | 75 | 2291 | 176.7 | 2.4 |
| Kobe Bryant | LAL | 82 | 2779 | 184.2 | 2.2 |
Table 1: Top 30 Players for 2011 based on Point Margin per game
Starting Kevin Love is like giving your team an eight point advantage (we’ll get to that more in a second.) The Heat got a 11.4 point boost every game LeBron and Wade showed up. Why don’t teams with these players win every game? Well let’s also check out the bottom players.
| Name | Team | G | MP | PM | PM/G |
| Andrea Bargnani | TOR | 66 | 2353 | -337.0 | -5.1 |
| Craig Brackins | PHI | 3 | 33 | -12.4 | -4.1 |
| Bobby Simmons | SAS | 2 | 16 | -6.5 | -3.3 |
| Brook Lopez | NJN | 82 | 2889 | -237.0 | -2.9 |
| Darko Milicic | MIN | 69 | 1686 | -193.8 | -2.8 |
| Earl Barron | MIL | 21 | 305 | -55.4 | -2.6 |
| Jeff Green | BOS | 75 | 2427 | -193.4 | -2.6 |
| Aaron Brooks | PHO | 59 | 1284 | -150.2 | -2.5 |
| Jordan Crawford | ATL | 42 | 1027 | -106.6 | -2.5 |
| Glen Davis | BOS | 78 | 2298 | -194.5 | -2.5 |
| Michael Beasley | MIN | 73 | 2361 | -179.3 | -2.5 |
| Samardo Samuels | CLE | 37 | 701 | -90.1 | -2.4 |
| Ekpe Udoh | GSW | 58 | 1030 | -140.6 | -2.4 |
| Travis Outlaw | NJN | 82 | 2358 | -198.3 | -2.4 |
| Jonny Flynn | MIN | 53 | 983 | -127.6 | -2.4 |
| Nick Young | WAS | 64 | 2034 | -149.7 | -2.3 |
| Al Harrington | DEN | 73 | 1665 | -170.1 | -2.3 |
| Jawad Williams | CLE | 26 | 391 | -59.2 | -2.3 |
| Ryan Hollins | CLE | 70 | 1182 | -158.1 | -2.3 |
| Eduardo Najera | CHA | 31 | 372 | -69.4 | -2.2 |
| Carl Landry | NOH | 76 | 2008 | -167.9 | -2.2 |
| Sonny Weems | TOR | 59 | 1413 | -130.0 | -2.2 |
| Linas Kleiza | TOR | 39 | 1032 | -85.5 | -2.2 |
| Jermaine O’Neal | BOS | 24 | 431 | -52.6 | -2.2 |
| Dante Cunningham | CHA | 78 | 1637 | -166.2 | -2.1 |
| DeMar DeRozan | TOR | 82 | 2851 | -173.2 | -2.1 |
| Gilbert Arenas | WAS | 70 | 1796 | -147.7 | -2.1 |
| Derek Fisher | LAL | 82 | 2297 | -172.5 | -2.1 |
| Nikola Pekovic | MIN | 65 | 887 | -136.2 | -2.1 |
| DaJuan Summers | DET | 22 | 199 | -45.9 | -2.1 |
Table 2: Worst 30 players of 2011 based on Point Margin per game
Bargnani is essentially an anti Dwyane Wade giving his team a 5 point handicap each game. Kevin Love’s 8.4 points can only handle Darko, Beasley and Flynn and the Wolves have even more bad players after that. Luckily the bad players hurt a little less than the good players help. For the most part at least.
If you want the entire league in a shiny image you can get them all here:
Point Margin for every player in 2011
-Arturo