Look, I get to be a star, you get to be a "role player", sound good?
The “Yay! Points!” thesis was christened back in 2010, and the concept has been around even longer.
Scoring is the most dominant factor in influencing player pay, All-Star votes, Awards and draft position in the NBA.
The NBA fans recently showed that they still can't get past their bias towards scorers when they voted Carmelo Anthony, Paul George, and Dwyane Wade into the All-Star Game as starters. Those guys score a lot of points, but they don't produce a lot of wins. Teams haven't stopped overpaying inefficent scorers either.
- Role Players: Players who don't score a lot of points, but contribute some amount of other stats, like rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks
- Stars: Players who score a lot of points, no matter how efficient or inefficient they are.
Of course, we reject blindly following Yay! Points! in our player evaluations, and look for more nuance. Scoring efficiency should be combined with the other boxscore stats that contribute to winning in the appropriate proportions, and the magnitude of those stats matters.
That sounds logical, but we still get funny looks when we say some conventional wisdom "stars" are really fake stars, and some "role players" are actually real stars.
Here's my rule of thumb for a better way to think about role players and stars, with example players from the 2015-2016 season (as of 2/2/2016):
- Role players (.100 to .200 Wins Produced per 48 minutes): Average to good at several of the boxscore stats that matter for winning (DeMar DeRozan, Mason Plumlee), or really good in one or a few areas but not too terrible at everything else (Klay Thompson, Jared Sullinger).
- Stars (.200 to .300 Wins Produced per 48 minutes): Strong in almost all boxscore stats that matter for winning (Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green), or near the top of the league in a couple of stats (Andre Drummond, Rajon Rondo) to make up for any weaknesses.
- Superstars (.300 or more Wins Produced per 48 minutes): Exceptional in almost every boxscore stat that matters for winning (Kawhi Leonard, Stephen Curry), or have multiple top of league strengths to overcome a big weakness (DeAndre Jordan, Russell Westbrook).
Remember, we're concerned about aggregate stats; negative stats and poor efficiency matters!
DeMarcus Cousins' 2015-2016 season is a great example of this. Even though he's been a great defensive players, and gets tons of rebounds, steals, and blocks per minute, he still isn't a top win producer; unlike fellow big men Drummond and Jordan, his turnovers, fouls, and missed shots counteracted his positive production for the first half of the season.