Ant was 9th and LaMelo was 13th in time of possession for players that played at least 40 games last year.

Great stat!

Time of possession can often be more misleading because it’s often a “how often to you bring the ball up” stat rather than tracking how often a player actually possessed the ball within the offense.

For example, when OKC is really leaning on SGA for offense, they’ll sometimes have someone else bring the ball up.

VJ isn’t ball dominant either

Rajon Rondo is probably the quintessential example. Pound the rock, probe for advantages, and mostly pass. You can see his stats on NBA.com for time of possession (he was 3rd in 2013-14). Other similar players were Ricky Rubio and maybe CP3 and Steve Nash (these two were obviously on different levels as scorers). The Rubio/Rondo archetype seems to be going extinct though. Players in general also seem to have the ball less (6 players had time of possession above 8 mins in 14-15; was just Jalen Brunson last season)

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/touches?Season=2013-14&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&dir=D&sort=TIME_OF_POSS

yeah guys like klay thompson, lauri markanen, MPJ are play finishers with higher usage relative to time of possession.

It’s not about finding players that are high usage rate but don’t need the ball.

It’s understanding that two high usage rate players can play completely differently and offer a lot to the game than is not reflected inside this stat.

Which is very important when you look at the fit of a player. For example, both an off ball player and on ball can have a usage of 30% on different teams. That would clearly just be the case of them being a main scoring option on their teams, not reflecting what their game contains.

Lauri Markannen

Regarding that stat, Maxey was at 7.1 mpg, VJ was at 4.0, Embiid was a 2.8, Brown was at 5.0, and LeBron was at 3.8

If you’ve never considered it then you’ve likely not used it to spread misinformation then!

Luka is likely one of the more good examples of a truly high usage player. Given his scoring and playmaking load, being the main ball handler, and not playing much off ball.

In general, a player’s TS% is much more about their shot distribution than their accuracy.

While that’s true, TS% doesn’t try to find out who’s the most efficient scorer in open play or anything of the sort. The league rules give foul shots, whether baited, flopped for, or legit, all those built-in advantages already so it just accounts for those things to show who mathematically gets the most out of their scoring opportunities.

Free throws are the most efficient way to score. You just don’t want to acknowledge reality. It’s a valid and powerful way to score. It’s also a skill that players learn. Shai and Deni literally added it to their games and they got so much better

You forgot that you also put the defender in foul trouble.

It just means they are “using” that possession, it doesn’t mean that’s a good thing.

Usage isn’t positive or negative though. If you’re thinking in those terms, you’ve already lost the plot. It measures how many plays get ended by a player. Turning the ball over ends the play. Measuring turnovers is basically their way of trying to measure how much ball handling responsbility the player has. It’s flawed, yes, but you can nit pick every other stat ever made this way. Usage shouldn’t be used in a vacuum without other context, just like the rest of the stats