VPS as a metric for winning seasons - March 29th, 2021
Premise: If VPS
(Value Point System) directly correlates to a team’s winning percentage, why
not use it as a metric to drive team improvement?
What is VPS?
VPS stands for Value Point System. It is calculated by adding the points and
rebounds plus two times the Assists, Charges taken, Steals and Blocks and dividing
that product by the Number of Free Throw misses plus two times the Field Goal
misses plus Fouls and Turnovers.
Most players focus on two things, scoring, and
sometimes, rebounding. Kids grow up with
parents asking, “how many points did you get today”? The emphasis is on scoring, but scoring is
only part of the game. If more emphasis
was placed upon passing, shot selection and defense, individuals would be more
likely to contribute to a team-oriented game rather than accumulating points.
The best player on the team is not necessarily the top
scorer. The best player of the team is
the player who gets high percentage points, rebounds, makes steals, takes
charges, blocks shots and minimizes their mistakes (turn-overs, fouls, missed
shots). IF, after reading this
article over, you do not agree that VPS is a metric worth adopting for your
team, then I will be surprised. Hudl
raves about it. Breakthrough
Stats tells a similar story.
Measuring VPS for a team and comparing it to their season
winning percentage was an interesting idea.
Typically, a VPS score of one or more is considered good. A score of two or more is considered excellent. How good is a team with a VPS average of one
vs. two? I was interested in finding out
that answer, and if VPS correlated to wins.
I examined twenty-one high school teams from the St.
Louis area, where stats for every player were available from the Post-Dispatch. I started with more teams but threw out a few
where it was obvious that the coaches had not entered all the shots taken and
the shooting percentages were in the high eighties or nineties for teams with
losing records. I chose about five teams
with winning records, five with losing records, and five at about a 500-winning
percentage.
Using the VPS formula, I calculated the team VPS average
for the 2020-2021 season. I also
calculated their EFF (Effectiveness) measure, which is used by NBA teams. The EFF is defined as:
|
EFF= |
(PTS + REB + AST + STL + BLK − Missed FG −
Missed FT - TO) / GP |
As it turned out, EFF and VPS appear to be linear
relationships per the graph below, so I will report on VPS.
TEAM
VPS AND EFFICIENCY ARE SIMILAR MEASURES
I analyzed twenty-one teams and plotted their winning
record percentage vs. the team average VPS.
The analysis included several state champions and final four teams and,
on the opposite end, several teams that won two to four games for the full
winter schedule. A wide range of winning and losing teams to evaluate VPS.
Now it begs the question… why are some basketball
programs better than others?
· Is
it the ability to recruit high-performing middle-schoolers?
· Is
it better feeder programs? Better AAU/Grassroots
development teams?
· Is
it more available and affordable skills training?
· Is
it a deeper pool of prospective high school players to pick from?
· Is
it better and deeper coaching staffs that can develop players from freshman to
seniors?
I cannot imagine that kids come into high schools with
a VPS of 1.5 or 2.0? Most of the teams I
have scored games for progress with age and maturity of skills. Most kids are barely a 1.0 VPS as freshmen unless your player is a private school recruit.
Personal trainers, AAU coaching, individual practice
habits and, most importantly, the high school coaching staff have a strong influence
on player development. Much of the
training is based upon personal evaluation and observation, just "plain old gut instinct" as one coach suggested, but VPS can provide valuable
insight into where players have both strengths and weaknesses.
But what makes one team a winner and another a
loser? Does VPS provide insight into a team’s
success?
Here’s the plot of Winning percentage vs. Team Average
VPS:
Teams that had an average VPS of 1.0 to 1.15 won 10 to 25% of the time. Teams that had VPS averages above 2.1, won over 90% of their games. Using a linear fit, the R-squared value is 0.84, which suggests that there is a good relationship between winning percentage and team VPS
(R-Squared is a statistical measure of fit that
indicates how much variation of a dependent variable is explained by the
independent variable (s) in a regression model).
The actual linear fitting equations was:
Winning
percentage = 0.6267 X Team VPS - 0.3586.
Because a perfect winning percentage is so difficult
to maintain, I do not think the actual VPS trendline is linear at the higher
winning percentage. As VPS rises,
perfection is difficult to obtain, and a natural log equation fit might be
closer to reality.
Here are the same teams fitted with a natural log
curved line
The R-squared value for a natural log rhythmic fit is 0.876, slightly better than the 0.84 value for a linear fit.
With the Winning percentage expressed as:
Winning
Percentage = 0.9678 X natural log (Team VPS) + 0.142
Using the natural log equation, predictions of winning
percentage are much closer to the actual winning percentage. In conclusion, if you can explain nearly 90%
of your ability to win games with the Value Point System metric, why would you
not want to try it?
I know that VPS is a relatively new stat and many
coaches are hammering at the elements of VPS in very specific ways…. Rebounding,
good shot selection (reducing misses), steals, taking charges, blocks on the
positive side and reducing missed shots, avoiding costly turnovers and ticky-tack
fouls. When your team unravels and ends
up losing it is usually because you turned it over too much, didn’t rebound or
took bad shots. So, what are coaches
saying about their approach?
When I asked coaches about VPS, many do not use it but
they put emphasis on the positive aspects of the game, the same elements that drive the Value Point System equation.
One state championship coach said “Hudl has every stat known to mankind. Pretty much every
coach has it and should be using stiff like that. The key stats I look at are
getting 30 rebounds a game.... less than 6 turnovers a game... less than 10
fouls per game....our turnover ratio (turning the other team over) to our fast
break points.
30 rebounds is key. I haven’t lost a game when we get 30
Another champion coach indicated, “ I don’t look at those stats that
closely. For the past few years, we
haven’t had to worry about TOs or specific analytics. We were more focused on shot selection,
offense spacing and movement w/o ball, rebound margin, eliminating easy looks,
and score-stops-scores series. “ So, while this coach is
not looking specifically at the VPS formula, he is alluding to factors that
play into high VPS values.
Another
young, developing program indicated the same thing. Focus on elements of the game that drive VPS
up.
“With my young
program, we keep everything as simple as possible we don’t use the terms VPS,
but we do focus on turnovers, turnovers ratio per possession. We also
focus on off and defensive rebounds.”
A top PHL coach responded,
“I did start using advanced analytics 2 years ago and has been one of the best
things I have done recently in Coaching.
We track everything (i.e. even dribbles, passes, deflections, +/-,
efficency, etc) per player.”
Another final four
coach, said “We have not used that in-season. We do look at both EFF and VPS
post-season for our returners and then develop a plan to improve in the
offseason. I’ve heard of coaches looking at EFF but not sure what those coaches
do other than just use it as a stat for the kids.”
One outstate coach said he "Still used some old fashioned gut instinct with some of my girls."
Another experienced freshman
coach told me he used VPS ratings to balance substitutions so that the team on
the floor would perform more evenly. He
also indicated that he used the VPS ratings to design specific drills for the
team and individuals to improve deficient areas. That is a wise coach to use the statistics
beyond points and rebounds to improve his squad.
So there is awareness
of the VPS and EFF stat but it is not, for the most part, being addressed as an
in-season metric for team and individual performance improvement.
Why not address
performance head-on? If the best indicator
of winning is the Value Point System then why not make players accountable to
VPS? Instead of posting statistics,
ranked by points per game, why not post statistics by VPS? The guys who sit on the end of the bench do
not get many shots at the end of games, but they do get touches, and wouldn’t it
be nice to see your name up near the top of a VPS sorted list because you took
care of the ball, rebounded and played your limited minutes flawlessly.
Why wouldn’t you want
to make your top scorer accountable for the turn-overs that stick out like a
sore thumb, compared to others on the team?
Why wouldn’t you want
your players looking at the elements that they do well and the areas they need
for improvement to raise their VPS during the season. Why not set season goals around raising VPS
each game?
Great coaches know that it is the little things that make teams better and they know intuitively what elements to work on, many by old-fashioned gut instinct,
and they are all measured in the Value Point System.
Postscript
I had this response from one of the younger, more progressive and more successful coaches
I use VPS a lot to help me determine who played well in a given game or who is playing well over a period of time. Sometimes it helps me look at things objectively after a tough loss or lopsided win. I’ll make changes to practice or philosophy after a set of games in some areas need improvement. That typically drives the VPS up.
I think it’s the players job to work on their games in the off season, hence improving their VPS. Then during the season, I try to match our philosophy to the kids' skill to maximize our team success. The in-season coaching that our staff will emphasize is typically tied to the ‘four factors’. (eFG%, TO%, OReb% and FT rate) Little tweaks throughout the year i.e. playing a faster/slower pace, crash the glass, open 3's vs contested/off the dribble and/or attacking the basket to get fouled more.
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