Scouting one-pager: LA Clippers (LAC)
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 | 103 | 221 | +8.6 |