2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,381 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.
shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
Sam Merrill is a genuine shot-maker: +7.8 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
Best shot diet: Jarrett Allen (1.23 xPPS on 528 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
Their most-used five that wins its minutes: D. Mitchell - J. Allen - D. Wade - E. Mobley - J. Tyson (+16.6/100 over 169 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
CLE
League
Δ
PPS (points per shot)
1.122
1.091
+0.031
xPPS, the shot-diet price*
1.131
1.097
+0.034
Shot-making, pts/100 vs model
-0.9
-0.5
-0.3
Rim share
28.8%
28.4%
+0.4 pp
Mid-range share
7.5%
10.0%
-2.6 pp
Three share
44.2%
41.5%
+2.7 pp
Corner share of threes
24.0%
25.9%
-1.9 pp
Final-4s (rush) shot share
2.0%
1.8%
+0.2 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
Donovan Mitchell
1,403
1.126
1.046
+8.0
+6.4
+3.7
Evan Mobley
859
1.164
1.226
-6.2
-5.0
+1.3
Jaylon Tyson
670
1.184
1.159
+2.5
+1.4
-0.0
Jarrett Allen
528
1.278
1.228
+5.0
+3.6
+1.8
Sam Merrill
484
1.248
1.100
+14.8
+7.8
+2.7
De'Andre Hunter
482
0.998
1.074
-7.6
-4.9
-1.8
Darius Garland
377
1.058
1.030
+2.9
+1.3
+0.1
James Harden
352
1.159
1.041
+11.9
+5.6
+0.5
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
D. Mitchell - D. Hunter - D. Garland - E. Mobley - J. Tyson
89
190
-14.7
D. Mitchell - J. Allen - D. Wade - E. Mobley - J. Tyson
80
169
+16.6
J. Harden - D. Mitchell - D. Wade - S. Merrill - E. Mobley