Scouting one-pager: Brooklyn Nets (BKN)

2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 6,933 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.

Terms

PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
FGA: Field-goal attempts.
RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
CI: Confidence interval.

Keys

Volume-three profile: 45.5% of attempts from deep (league 41.5%).
Best shot diet: Nic Claxton (1.20 xPPS on 583 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
Their most-used five that wins its minutes: M. Porter Jr. - T. Mann - N. Claxton - N. Clowney - E. Dëmin (+2.1/100 over 633 possessions).

Shot profile vs league

	BKN	League	Δ
PPS (points per shot)	1.041	1.091	-0.051
xPPS, the shot-diet price*	1.105	1.097	+0.008
Shot-making, pts/100 vs model	-6.4	-0.5	-5.9
Rim share	29.4%	28.4%	+1.0 pp
Mid-range share	7.2%	10.0%	-2.8 pp
Three share	45.5%	41.5%	+4.0 pp
Corner share of threes	25.0%	25.9%	-0.9 pp
Final-4s (rush) shot share	1.9%	1.8%	+0.1 pp

* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).

Personnel (top 8 by volume)

Player	FGA	PPS	xPPS (diet)	Making/100	EB making	RAPM/100
Michael Porter Jr.	958	1.111	1.091	+2.0	+1.3	+1.2
Noah Clowney	631	0.997	1.097	-10.0	-6.7	-1.1
Nic Claxton	583	1.148	1.200	-5.2	-4.1	-4.3
Nolan Traore	479	0.887	1.045	-15.7	-10.0	-1.9
Egor Dëmin	449	1.073	1.076	-0.3	-0.4	+0.3
Danny Wolf	440	0.964	1.108	-14.4	-8.8	-0.9
Ziaire Williams	433	1.048	1.162	-11.3	-6.7	-1.6
Terance Mann	368	1.065	1.102	-3.7	-2.3	-0.7

EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).

Most-used lineups

Lineup	Min	Poss	Net/100
M. Porter Jr. - T. Mann - N. Claxton - N. Clowney - E. Dëmin	307	633	+2.1
M. Porter Jr. - N. Claxton - N. Clowney - N. Traore - E. Dëmin	143	299	-24.1
M. Porter Jr. - N. Claxton - N. Clowney - E. Dëmin - D. Powell	91	190	-1.1