Insights Package
The Insights Package harnesses large amounts of data collected from the many games that Synergy analyzes each year. Insights customers have a suite of tools at their disposal, which highlight useful information that coaches and scouts can act upon to develop winning team strategies:
- Offensive Roles
- Player Comps
- Player Projection Box Score
- Enhanced Leaderboards
- Team Adjusted Leaderboards
- Player Impact Leaderboards
- Player Projection Leaderboards
- Synergy Shot Quality (SSQ), Synergy Shot Making (SSM), and Points Per Shot (PPS) stats
*If you would like access to these features, please reach out to your account manager.
Offensive Roles
Rather than rely on the old-school, height-based position labels, Synergy has created functional descriptions of how players play that separate offensive role from defensive responsibility. These new offensive role labels are defined by how a player tries to help their team score points, either through the shots that they take themselves or the ones they set up for their teammates with their playmaking.
- Offensive Role label on the Player Data page
- Offensive Role Filter on Player Leaderboards page
- Offensive Role Filter on the Player Comparison Page
- Offensive Role filter on the Player Selection page.
Below are short descriptions of Synergy’s Offensive Roles:
- Playmaking ball handlers have high on-ball scoring rates and high playmaking rates.
- Secondary ball handlers have high on-ball scoring rates with some spot-up, catch-and-shoot scoring.
- Scoring ball handlers have high on-ball scoring rates with very little spot-up, catch-and-shoot scoring.
- Playmaking wings set up their teammates to score more than most other wings.
- Slashing wings drive to the basket more than most other wings.
- Spot-up shooting wings have high rates of spot-up, catch-and-shoot scoring.
- Dynamic shooting wings try to score by using off-ball screens, handoffs, and dribble jumpers.
- Playmaking bigs set up their teammates to score more often than most other bigs.
- Post-up bigs have high rates of scoring or passing from the post.
- Stretch bigs have high pick-and-pop and catch-and-shoot rates.
- Rim-finishing bigs try to score by rolling, cutting, and rebounding.
Note: Brief descriptions of each role have been included as tooltips on the Team Site. Hovering over the role will reveal these descriptions.
To get more in-depth information about how stats have been used to sort the players, you can read Explaining Synergy’s Offensive Roles. To learn more about the characteristics of each role, you can read Characteristics of each Synergy Offensive Role.
Player Comps
The top-5 Player Comps for a player – within their division or league as well as the top-5 'NBA role models' and 'WNBA role models' – can be found on the Player Data Page.
Player Comps match players as closely as possible by comparing stats across three main categories: production, style of play, and efficiency. If you would like to read more on Player Comps, check out the following blog post: Introducing Synergy's Player Comps.
Note: To see Player Comps, the Competition filter must be set to “All Excluding Exhibitions”
Player Comps also include a "Compare Player" link that takes you to the Comparison page with your selected player and his/her comps.
Player Projection Box Score
Player projections identify the expected box score contributions that player's will make to their respective teams. This stat projection follows a player's history and trends to give coaches a better idea of how that player might perform the rest of the season.
To find the Projected Box Score, first select a player and then select the Cumulative Box Tab. Then you will see a toggle for Projected Stats.
Enhanced Leaderboards
Leaderboards deliver rankings of players and teams based on the situation and stats selected. In addition to the standard Player Leaderboards and Team Leaderboards, Insights customers have access to several enhanced leaderboards:
- Player Impact Leaderboards
- Player Projection Leaderboards
- Team Adjusted Leaderboards
Player Impact Leaderboards show player rankings that evaluate the overall impact a player makes when they are on the court. To get more detailed information on Player Impact, you can check out the following blog post:
Explaining Synergy’s New Player Impact Stats.
Player Projection Leaderboards show player rankings based on the expected box score contributions that player will make to their team, for the rest of the season.
Team Adjusted Leaderboards show team rankings that account for several factors:
- the strength of the opponent
- the venue (home or away)
- the number of rest days taken before the game (i.e. travel schedules)
- the stakes of the moment (was it a high-leverage possession in a tight game or a "garbage time" play?)
- the stage of the season (e.g., was it the first game of the year?
Synergy Shot Quality, Synergy Shot Making, & Points Per Shot
Synergy Shot Quality gives coaches and scouts an objective way to evaluate the quality of each shot. It uses the contextual information that Synergy collects for every play to determine the probability a league-average shooter makes a shot in the same situation.
SSQ, SSM, and PPS stats are on the Leaderboards. You can reorder the Leaderboards based on these stats by clicking on the stat columns.
SSQ, SSM, and PPS stats can be added to the Scouting Report or to Player Comparisons, using the Add Stats buttons at the bottom of the pages.
These stats can also be used to evaluate player shot types and play types, on the Player Data page.
On the Game Data page, you can filter Shot Charts by high shot quality or low shot quality and by makes and misses to help with team evaluations.
Synergy Shot Quality (SSQ)
SSQ determines the expected points per shot based on circumstances such as shot type (jumper, layup, etc.), shot distance, defender distance (whether the shot was open or guarded), play type (the action that led to the shot), etc.
To find SSQ, Synergy multiplies the shot probability by the value of the shot. For example, if open, spot-up, catch-and-shoot 3-pointers from the top of the key were made about 38% of the time in the previous season, the SSQ for that kind of shot would be estimated at 38% x 3 points or 1.14 points per shot.
To get more in-depth details about the Synergy Shot Quality metric, you can read Explaining Synergy Shot Quality.
Synergy Shot Making (SSM)
Synergy Shot Making represents how much an individual shooter exceeds expectations relative to a league-average shooter facing the same situation. Players who make more shots than would be expected will have higher SSM scores. To find SSM scores, Synergy subtracts SSQ from Points per Shot (PPS).
Points Per Shot (PPS)
An efficiency rating that calculates how many points on average a player or team is scoring for a specific shot type or category, per shot (excluding free throws).