The NBA's H-Score Stars
As we approach the end of the NBA season, which stars are doing the most, the most consistently?
I’m a big believer that the NBA is about Stars. The best players are the ones who determine the outcome of seasons and series. And to do that, it demands that one can consistently take over games.
A supporting cast matters, but the ability of the star to elevate and control the game has always been a central part of basketball.
That’s, in part, why basketball is so prone to having eras—where great teams, or more recently players, separate from “also rans”.
In fact, we can tell the 60 year history of the NBA pretty cleanly by talking about 10-12 players. We might leave out something. But not much.
One reliable way of separating the great from the good is with H-Index assessments. The idea of calculating the maximum number H, so that a player has recorded at least H points, rebounds, assists, etc. in at least H games.
This stat benefits from rewarding exceptional performances and consistency. That is exactly what we look for in a star: consistent, exceptional performance.
So who are the best players this year?
Scoring
This years’ H-index points is a close race between Luka, Giannis, and SGA. Luka has 33 games with 33 or more points. Quite the feat!
Tatum, Jokic, Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brunson, and Steph make up the rest of the elite list. Largely, this list is what you would expect. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the presence of Tatum, who is thought to be having a middling scoring year.
If anything, it suggests we might be underestimating Tatum’s takeover potential come the playoffs.
Rebounds
The H-rebounds leaderboard is a list of the best big men in the game: Domantas Soabonis, Rudy Gobert, Anthony Davis, and, of course: Jokic and Giannis.
Sabonis leads the list, but it’s Giannis and Jokic whose presence on the list impresses the most, given their presence on the scoring list.
Assists
The H-Assists leaders is a list of the leagues top permiter distributors… and Jokic. Again.
Doncic also appears on the assists list, after topping the scoring list. A testament to his greatness as a playmaker. After Jokic, there is no doubt that Luka is the most challenging individual player in the game to defend.
At 25, there is still plenty of time for Doncic to blossom into a champion; however, he’s in this odd no-man’s land between a dominant, successful Jokic and the young, hard-charging Wembanyama. If Doncic only wins a single title, he’ll be an interesting case study to look back on. Great players who only won a single title—like fellow Dallas Maverick Dirk Nowitzki.
Blocks
Finally, to round out the single-stat list, we have the block leaders. Wembanyama and Brook Lopez tops the list at 6 games with 6 or more blocks. However, there is really quite a difference between Wembanyama and everyone else. Wembanyama is averaging nearly a half a block more than everyone else on the list at 4.3 blocks per 36 minutes. On the season, he has nearly 50 more blocks than the runners up.
If we’re picking a ball-swatter to take points off the board, the giant Frenchman is already a force on the basketball court.
Points + Rebounds
We can also look at these stats together, embracing the NBA’s tradition of “double-doubles”, “triple doubles”, etc. Who had the most games, H, with at least H points and H rebounds?
This list reads back to us the best bigs in the game: Jokic, Sabonis, Davis, Giannis, and Gobert.
Giannis is the strongest on scoring, weakest on rebounding. Sabonis is strongest on rebounding, but weakest on scoring. Jokic gives you 90% of each. And is the best player in the world, because not only is he on this list…
Points + Assists
Jokic and Sabonis are also top 5 on the Points and Assists list, with 12 games with 12 or more points and 12 or more assists. That’s only one game behind Haliburton, Young, and Doncic—the players getting assists from more traditional positions.
The two European bigs really are the most versatile and impactful players in the game.
Points + Assists + Rebounds
And lastly, we can combine all the stats together. Which players in the league had the most games, H, with at least H points, H assists, and H rebounds?
No surprise, it’s been the same players we’ve been talking about all along: Jokic, Sabonis, Doncic. With appearances from Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James.
Jokic tops the list at 11, and makes a credible run at 12. Wheras Sabonis has many fewer such games. The dropoff between Jokic, Sabonis, Luka and the rest of the league should not be understated. Where the three of them all hover around twenty triple-doubles, no one else in the league has ten.
A significant drawback of the H-rankings are that they often mask the gaps between the tiers of players. In this case, the distance between the top tier and the tier below it, is sizable.
For example, by the time we’re talking about a 9-9-9 game: Giannis has 12, which qualifies him. But Jokic, Sabonis, and Doncic each have nearly 30 of such games.
And while LeBron has 17 8-8-8 games, the big three each have nearly 40 of such games. That is, we should EXPECT 8-8-8 out of them every night. Whereas for LeBron, it’s a good performance (about once in four games.)
Who is the MVP?
What this really boils down to is knowing if there is a dark-horse in the MVP race we need to be considering. Because we believe that only teams with serious MVP contenders can win NBA titles.
And Sabonis could be creeping in. He earned 4 Manalytics points last year with a 7th place finish. A 4th place finish this year would put the Kings over 10 points, and force us to consider them as an NBA title contender.
But Sabonis is probably outside the bubble of top vote getters. And he is more of an also-ran player, who is starting to be taken seriously, but not worthy of the elite status yet.
The rest of the stars—Jokic, Luka, Giannis—all had enough cache going into the season for us to consider their teams championship contenders. As did Tatum and the Celtics, whose fans should be encouraged by seeing Tatum so high on the scoring list.
SGA is likely to be on the list next year. We recommended placing money on the Thunder earlier in the year when they were +10,000 to win the title. Those bets can now be cashed out at around 4 to 1.
What about Wemby?
It’d be malpractice to sign off without talking about the biggest story in the NBA. And I say that because all the signs continue to point in the direction of a player who is on track to being the best ever.
In fact, right now, there’s a good case to be made that Wembanyama is one of the top big men in the league. Next year, Wembanyama will be a better player than Anthony Davis, if he isn’t already.
By the numbers, Wembanyama trails Davis in points and rebounds, but leads him in assists and blocks. The caveats are Wembanyama’s minutes restriction and the fact that he’s playing on one of the league’s worst teams. If the Spurs were any good, we’d likely see better numbers from Wembanyama. And we are already seeing him do incredible things: like put up 40 and 20 as a rookie.
The area where Wembanyama has struggled is his shooting. He’s shooting only 80% from the free-throw line and only 32% from three point land. The former is on-par with his career averages and the latter is an improvement. Those numbers are not good enough to be a game breaking scoring.
Wembanyama needs to get both of those numbers up about 5-points, to 85% and 37%. That puts him in good-shooter territory, comparable to Jaylen Brown, Austin Reaves, or Devin Booker. Ideally, we would see him join Kevin Durant north of 40% from 3-point land. Wembanyama seems to want that to be a part of his game—but right now it’s not.
This might seem like a leap for the young star, but it’s not unprecedented. Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Dirk Nowitzki, Kristaps Porzingis, and LeBron James all saw their 3-pointer stabilize around 24 years old. That gives Wemby four-years of runway to show us what we should expect from beyond the arc.
And it gives Jokic four years to prepare to pass the torch—unless someone surprises us and takes it from him first.