After years of tracking numbers, these are the ones I still believe in

Not all stats are created equal.

When the offseason rolls around, we all start looking for ways to pass the time. It’s been nearly four months since the Phoenix Suns played a meaningful game, and with no Olympics to distract us this summer, there’s been plenty of space for our minds to wander.

Me? I turn to podcasts.

On the way to work, mowing the lawn, cleaning out the garage. If I’m doing something, odds are I’ve got a podcast playing. Maybe that’s part of the reason why so many of us feel constantly overstimulated. We don’t allow ourselves to sit in silence. There’s always a voice in our ear, always something filling the gaps. For me, it’s stories told by strangers and observations sharper than my own. It’s comfort disguised as content. And it keeps the noise of the offseason at bay.

With all of that being said, I recently found myself immersed in a 30 for 30 podcast series about Martin Manley. Heard of him? Probably not. He’s one of those forgotten minds who existed on the fringes of the basketball world. A guy who, in the late ’80s, self-published three editions of a book called Basketball Heaven. His mission? To become basketball’s Bill James.

Manley was overanalyzing the sport before it was cool. He broke down the game mathematically, championing the value of the three-point shot when most coaches still viewed it as a gimmick. He dissected spacing, efficiency, and shot value with a level of rigor that, in hindsight, made him decades ahead of his time.

If Bill James fathered baseball’s sabermetric revolution, giving rise to Moneyball and the Oakland A’s braintrust, then Manley was trying to be that guy for basketball.

But the basketball world didn’t embrace him the same way baseball welcomed James. So, Manley moved on. He wandered into other corners of life, chasing projects, theories, and purpose. I won’t spoil the end of the podcast (it’s six episodes and worth your time) but let’s just say his eccentricity took him down a road that’s as fascinating as it is tragic.

As I listened, one question kept tapping me on the shoulder: what stats actually matter? What are the clearest indicators of a player’s greatness, or a team’s true success? In a sea of data, what signals cut through the noise?

I look at stats a lot. Probably too much. I have what some might call a PhD in navigating NBA.com and Basketball Reference, clicking and cross-referencing my way through rabbit holes of player data and team splits. I’ve got subscriptions to B-Ball Index and Stathead. My bookmarks bar looks like a crime scene investigation, except the only mystery I’m solving is why the Suns can’t defend the corner three.

But this is part of why I love writing for Bright Side.

It’s not just about watching the Suns play, it’s about what comes after. It’s about the process of observation, intuition, and then validation. I see something on the court, I scribble it down mentally, and then I dig into the data to find out if what I saw was real. Was it truth, or was it just a fleeting impression disguised as insight?

There are stats I naturally gravitate toward. Field goal percentages, like batting averages, are easy. They’re the low-hanging fruit. They give you a snapshot. But they don’t always tell the whole story.

If you tell me Devin Booker shot 33.2% from three last season, okay. Sure. That’s a number. But it’s not the truth. The real story is how he got those threes. Was it off the catch? Was he drifting to the corner? Was he creating off the dribble against a late closeout?

Because when you peel back the surface, you’ll find that Booker shot 36.5% on catch-and-shoot threes and just 30.7% on pull-ups. That’s a meaningful split. That’s the kind of number that tells me he’s better when playing off the ball, letting the game flow to him instead of forcing it from 27 feet out. And the fact that he took pull-up three’s 21.3% of the time? Not great, Bob.

That kind of nuance is my money spot. It’s where numbers start to mirror the eye test. I love effective field goal percentage for that reason too. It’s more accessible, more holistic. It accounts for the value of the three-ball and gives a clearer picture of a player’s overall efficiency. You can compare guys across the league and across roles without the noise.

To me, that’s the fun of it. The dance between what you see and what you can prove. The art of watching basketball through a human lens, and then trying to measure it in code.

Offensive and defensive rating are supposed to be the holy grail. The sport’s best effort to quantify a player’s impact on each side of the ball. In theory, they tell us how efficient a player is when they’re on the floor, how well the offense hums with them out there, how much the defense bends or breaks. But in practice? They’re team-dependent. They’re passengers on the lineup data train. You’re not just measuring one guy; you’re measuring five guys and all the noise that comes with them.

So yeah, I take them with a grain of salt. I use them, sure, to reinforce a point or add context to a conversation. But I’m not shackled to them the way some statheads are. If you want to tell me Player X has a 119.4 offensive rating and a 111.6 defensive rating, cool story. Now show me how that happened. Show me the film. Show me the why.

Now, apply that same metric to a team, and I’m listening. Because when you zoom out and look at offensive and defensive ratings in the aggregate, that’s where it clicks. That’s where it becomes useful. You’re taking in the totality of a team’s performance on both ends, stripping away some of the individual variance and focusing on collective outcomes. That’s why net rating might be the most important statistic we have for team success. It answers a simple but vital question: How much better is your offense than your defense? Or, if you’re the Phoenix Suns, is it better at all?

For individual players, I prefer the classics. Effective field goal percentage. Assist-to-turnover ratio. Rebounding percentage. They’re simple, but they paint an honest picture.

Effective field goal percentage tells me how well you’re shooting, without getting bogged down in the weeds of shot creation. Are you making the most of your touches? Are you punishing defenses from two and from three?

Assist-to-turnover ratio tells me whether you’re thinking the game or just throwing the ball around like it’s a live grenade. Did you make the right read? Did you value the possession? Or did you hand the ball to the guy in the wrong jersey?

Rebounding percentage? That’s all about effort. Not just how many boards you got, but how many chances you had to get them. It’s less about volume and more about will. Are you out there hunting rebounds, or are you watching someone else do the dirty work?

Stats like these? They mean something to me. They always have.

Back when I was 13, I used to build fake basketball leagues in the early versions of Excel. This was 1996. Dial-up internet. Windows 95. I was out there entering made-up box scores, calculating made-up stats, finding fake inconsistencies in my fake data, and fixing them like a lunatic. I didn’t think of it as analytics back then. I just thought of it as fun.

We all have our quirks. We all have our rituals to kill the dog days of summer. This is mine. Maybe yours is different. But whatever it is, I hope you’ve found a way to pass the time. Because soon enough, summer will give way to fall. The air will cool, the games will count again, and we’ll all go back to arguing about midrange shots and bench rotations like it’s the most important thing in the world.

And maybe, in some weird way, it is.