2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,469 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.
corner three: A three-pointer from the corner, where the NBA line is roughly 3 ft closer than the arc - the geometry discount that makes it the cheapest three.
Keys
They hunt corner threes: 28.7% of their threes come from the corners (league 25.9%). Run shooters off the corner line first.
Svi Mykhailiuk is a genuine shot-maker: +5.9 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
Best shot diet: Cody Williams (1.15 xPPS on 509 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
Their most-used five that wins its minutes: J. Nurkić - L. Markkanen - S. Mykhailiuk - K. George - A. Bailey (-8.8/100 over 400 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
UTA
League
Δ
PPS (points per shot)
1.073
1.091
-0.018
xPPS, the shot-diet price*
1.083
1.097
-0.014
Shot-making, pts/100 vs model
-1.0
-0.5
-0.4
Rim share
25.8%
28.4%
-2.6 pp
Mid-range share
9.9%
10.0%
-0.1 pp
Three share
40.2%
41.5%
-1.3 pp
Corner share of threes
28.7%
25.9%
+2.8 pp
Final-4s (rush) shot share
1.8%
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
Ace Bailey
892
1.039
1.094
-5.4
-4.2
-3.0
Keyonte George
881
1.065
1.016
+4.9
+3.5
-2.3
Brice Sensabaugh
857
1.109
1.069
+4.0
+2.7
-2.2
Lauri Markkanen
805
1.097
1.115
-1.8
-1.5
+2.7
Kyle Filipowski
657
1.096
1.113
-1.7
-1.4
+0.9
Isaiah Collier
515
1.043
1.015
+2.8
+1.7
-4.4
Cody Williams
509
0.990
1.149
-15.9
-11.1
-2.8
Svi Mykhailiuk
362
1.227
1.100
+12.7
+5.9
+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. Nurkić - L. Markkanen - S. Mykhailiuk - K. George - A. Bailey
179
400
-8.8
B. Sensabaugh - C. Williams - I. Collier - K. Filipowski - A. Bailey
52
119
-14.3
J. Nurkić - S. Mykhailiuk - K. George - C. Williams - A. Bailey