Scouting one-pager: Golden State Warriors (GSW)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,280 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
- Volume-three profile: 49.7% of attempts from deep (league 41.5%).
- Stephen Curry is a genuine shot-maker: +10.9 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Draymond Green (1.13 xPPS on 491 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: S. Curry - J. Butler III - D. Green - J. Kuminga - B. Podziemski (+17.6/100 over 142 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| GSW | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.099 | 1.091 | +0.008 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.089 | 1.097 | -0.008 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +1.0 | -0.5 | +1.6 |
| Rim share | 25.7% | 28.4% | -2.7 pp |
| Mid-range share | 7.9% | 10.0% | -2.2 pp |
| Three share | 49.7% | 41.5% | +8.2 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 26.5% | 25.9% | +0.6 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 2.0% | 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 |
|---|
| Brandin Podziemski | 866 | 1.087 | 1.040 | +4.6 | +3.2 | +0.7 |
| Stephen Curry | 799 | 1.174 | 1.012 | +16.1 | +10.9 | +1.8 |
| Moses Moody | 557 | 1.151 | 1.102 | +4.9 | +2.7 | +1.7 |
| De'Anthony Melton | 528 | 0.951 | 1.044 | -9.3 | -6.2 | +2.3 |
| Draymond Green | 491 | 1.041 | 1.133 | -9.2 | -5.7 | -3.2 |
| Jimmy Butler III | 462 | 1.108 | 1.100 | +0.8 | +0.3 | +3.8 |
| Gui Santos | 460 | 1.170 | 1.118 | +5.1 | +2.9 | +1.5 |
| Quinten Post | 439 | 1.091 | 1.113 | -2.2 | -1.5 | +0.8 |
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 |
|---|
| S. Curry - J. Butler III - D. Green - M. Moody - Q. Post | 125 | 275 | -6.9 |
| S. Curry - J. Butler III - D. Green - J. Kuminga - B. Podziemski | 65 | 142 | +17.6 |
| J. Butler III - D. Green - M. Moody - B. Podziemski - Q. Post | 64 | 129 | +1.6 |