There’s No 'I' in 'Team': Estimating NBA Players’ Offensive Production

This article models interactions between basketball teams in order to estimate individual players’ offensive production. A theoretical model predicts that, in equilibrium, better offensive players will shoot more often and that all offensive players will average the same number of points per shot. This prediction is tested and found to be consistent with professional basketball data. The model is then used to identify and estimate individual players’ offensive production. The estimates correspond to experts’ rankings and are stable across teams for players that were traded during the season.

Keywords: basketball, empirical industrial organization, production functions, structural models

JEL Classification: L11, L83

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Chen, Xinlei and Chen, Yuxin and Wilbur, Kenneth C., There’s No 'I' in 'Team': Estimating NBA Players’ Offensive Production (February 15, 2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1861192 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1861192