2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,431 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
Cam Spencer is a genuine shot-maker: +10.9 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
Best shot diet: GG Jackson (1.14 xPPS on 514 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
Their most-used five that wins its minutes: J. Jackson Jr. - V. Williams Jr. - Z. Edey - J. Wells - C. Coward (+12.7/100 over 213 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
MEM
League
Δ
PPS (points per shot)
1.066
1.091
-0.025
xPPS, the shot-diet price*
1.084
1.097
-0.013
Shot-making, pts/100 vs model
-1.7
-0.5
-1.2
Rim share
25.2%
28.4%
-3.2 pp
Mid-range share
8.4%
10.0%
-1.6 pp
Three share
43.6%
41.5%
+2.1 pp
Corner share of threes
24.0%
25.9%
-1.9 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
Jaylen Wells
698
1.047
1.084
-3.7
-2.7
-1.3
Jaren Jackson Jr.
670
1.067
1.015
+5.2
+3.5
-0.4
Cedric Coward
648
1.085
1.103
-1.8
-1.4
+2.0
Cam Spencer
556
1.209
1.023
+18.5
+10.9
+0.7
GG Jackson
514
1.117
1.140
-2.3
-1.7
+0.3
Santi Aldama
476
1.105
1.088
+1.7
+0.8
-0.1
Jock Landale
389
1.154
1.134
+2.1
+0.9
-0.5
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
366
0.970
1.029
-5.9
-3.5
-1.0
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. Jackson Jr. - V. Williams Jr. - Z. Edey - J. Wells - C. Coward
102
213
+12.7
K. Caldwell-Pope - J. Landale - S. Aldama - C. Spencer - J. Wells
97
203
+8.9
J. Jackson Jr. - J. Morant - S. Aldama - J. Wells - C. Coward