Our friends at numberFire know a thing or two about statistics. And while we here at SLAM tend to rely more on the eye test when it comes to our NBA opinions, we appreciate that advanced stats are an important thing to keep an eye on.
For the last few weeks we’ve been running numberFire’s Team Power Rankings. Now, they’re sharing their individual player efficiency rankings. We’ll let them explain…
numberFire Efficiency Rating Derivative (NERD) is a system of evaluating every player in the NBA based on various offensive and defensive efficiency metrics. NERD rating for players shows production in efficiency. Visit numberFire to check out a detailed explanation of the NERD stat for player efficiency and basketball efficiency stats in general.
Below are numberFire’s NBA player rankings to this point in the year. The statistics are updated daily.
Extra Points:
● The top four players in nERD: Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, and Russell Westbrook remain comfortably ahead of the rest of the League.
● Using nERD to look at depth: Five teams have at least five players in the top 100 in nERD: San Antonio Spurs (9), Golden State Warriors (7), Boston Celtics (5), Cleveland Cavaliers (5) LA Clippers (5)
● Karl-Anthony Towns is the only rookie in the top 25 in nERD after a dominant second half of the season.
