2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 6,857 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
Kawhi Leonard is a genuine shot-maker: +9.5 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
Best shot diet: Ivica Zubac (1.19 xPPS on 429 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
Their most-used five that wins its minutes: J. Harden - K. Dunn - I. Zubac - J. Collins - K. Sanders (+8.6/100 over 221 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
LAC
League
Δ
PPS (points per shot)
1.118
1.091
+0.026
xPPS, the shot-diet price*
1.082
1.097
-0.015
Shot-making, pts/100 vs model
+3.5
-0.5
+4.1
Rim share
26.9%
28.4%
-1.5 pp
Mid-range share
9.8%
10.0%
-0.2 pp
Three share
40.4%
41.5%
-1.1 pp
Corner share of threes
25.5%
25.9%
-0.4 pp
Final-4s (rush) shot share
1.9%
1.8%
+0.0 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
Kawhi Leonard
1,258
1.146
1.028
+11.8
+9.5
+5.7
James Harden
771
1.013
1.010
+0.3
+0.0
+0.5
John Collins
659
1.240
1.156
+8.4
+5.8
-1.4
Brook Lopez
542
1.066
1.059
+0.7
+0.2
-0.4
Kris Dunn
477
1.119
1.090
+2.9
+1.5
-0.5
Ivica Zubac
429
1.226
1.187
+3.9
+2.5
-1.0
Jordan Miller
399
1.158
1.067
+9.1
+5.2
-0.4
Kobe Sanders
384
1.141
1.082
+5.8
+2.9
+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
J. Harden - K. Leonard - K. Dunn - I. Zubac - J. Collins
303
634
+3.9
B. Lopez - K. Leonard - K. Dunn - D. Jones Jr. - J. Collins
141
278
-1.4
J. Harden - K. Dunn - I. Zubac - J. Collins - K. Sanders