Scouting one-pager: Washington Wizards (WAS)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,409 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
- Above-the-break three team: corners are only 22.0% of their threes (league 25.9%); their spacing lives higher on the arc.
- CJ McCollum is a genuine shot-maker: +4.6 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Justin Champagnie (1.18 xPPS on 462 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: K. Middleton - C. McCollum - B. Coulibaly - A. Sarr - T. Johnson (+9.2/100 over 196 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| WAS | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.070 | 1.091 | -0.022 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.076 | 1.097 | -0.021 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -0.6 | -0.5 | -0.0 |
| Rim share | 27.3% | 28.4% | -1.1 pp |
| Mid-range share | 12.7% | 10.0% | +2.7 pp |
| Three share | 40.3% | 41.5% | -1.2 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 22.0% | 25.9% | -3.9 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.7% | 1.8% | -0.2 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 |
|---|
| Bub Carrington | 741 | 1.076 | 1.007 | +6.9 | +4.5 | -5.1 |
| Alex Sarr | 656 | 1.040 | 1.086 | -4.6 | -3.6 | -2.2 |
| Tre Johnson | 647 | 1.015 | 1.005 | +1.1 | +0.5 | -0.6 |
| Will Riley | 618 | 1.003 | 1.055 | -5.2 | -3.8 | -3.5 |
| Kyshawn George | 577 | 1.049 | 1.024 | +2.5 | +1.4 | -1.8 |
| Bilal Coulibaly | 541 | 0.970 | 1.145 | -17.4 | -11.9 | -2.4 |
| CJ McCollum | 529 | 1.089 | 1.010 | +7.9 | +4.6 | +3.4 |
| Justin Champagnie | 462 | 1.119 | 1.181 | -6.2 | -4.2 | -0.5 |
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 |
|---|
| K. Middleton - C. McCollum - B. Coulibaly - A. Sarr - T. Johnson | 88 | 196 | +9.2 |
| K. Middleton - C. McCollum - B. Coulibaly - A. Sarr - K. George | 90 | 192 | -12.5 |
| K. Middleton - C. McCollum - A. Sarr - B. Carrington - K. George | 86 | 188 | -3.2 |