NBA HIMdex

In recent years, being referred to as HIM has been a popular topic in basketball discourse. The conditions for being called HIM, however, is very subjective.

Usually, players are referred to as HIM if they make big shots, make big plays, and impact the game in a certain way. The subjective part comes from each player (or fan) having a different perspective of what impact in the game they like.

Let's take LeBron James as an example. There have been numerous times where he took to social media (Instagram, Twitter/X) to call his teammates or former teammates HIM or H.I.M. (Some might say it's his favorite saying). The list includes Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, etc. One of the more infamous ones is this tweet/post right here:

LeBron has also gone on record to call himself HIM.

We can actually stop right here because maybe LeBron has been HIM all along...

But no, we will proceed. I used this scenario, LeBron being HIM and referring to others as HIM, as the premise for this project. Simply put, it takes one to know one. If a player is deemed HIM, other players who impact the game in similar ways are also HIM. This is the main concept of this project.

BONUS: here's a fan at the 2023 FIBA World Cup in Manila sharing his thoughts on who's HIM:

Anthony Edwards seems to agree. Shoutout to the Pinoy fans, man.

For this project, I focused on 4 engineered metrics.

1. Bucket Contribution Rate

I used the sum of all the counting statistics that lead to a bucket: field goals, free throws, and assists. A player's bucket contribution rate is then the player's total divided by the team's total in a game.

I used buckets as a main concept because as the late great Bill Russell once said, "this game has always been, and will always be, about buckets."

(Scene from the Uncle Drew movie)

2. Stop Contribution Rate

Along with buckets, I measured defensive stops to keep it balanced. As Cavs legend Austin Carr will always say, "it's stop and score time".

For stops, I took the sum of counting statistics that end an opponent possession: blocks, steals, and defensive rebounds. The contribution rate is computed similarly as for buckets.

For the next two metrics, I attempted to measure how a player's performance boosts the performance of his teammates. This is when a player is so locked in that his teammates also play better than their usual standards.

This phenomenon is best shown in one of the final scenes of the basketball anime, Kuroko no Basket. The star player, Kagami Taiga, was so locked in that he entered the zone. His teammates followed his lead which led to better synergy and overall improved play:

(Scene from Kuroko no Basket)

The NBA equivalent for this that comes to mind is when the Cavs went on a huge run to beat the Pacers in game 3 of the first round of 2017 playoffs. The run was sparked by LeBron James, but the other Cavs players were also on fire, hitting big shots and making crucial defensive plays. (Shoutout to Channing Frye and Kyle Korver for making those huge threes down the stretch).

3. Teammate Bucket Boost Contribution Rate

For the selected player, I attempted to quantify this by doing the following:

• Got each teammate's percent difference of buckets in a specific game versus average buckets per game. This is the individual bucket boost.
• Got the average bucket boost for all the teammates that played in that specified game.
• Adjusted the average teammate bucket boost by the selected player's minutes played in that game.

4. Teammate Stop Boost Contribution Rate

The computation here is similar to the previous one, except replace buckets with stops.

These contribution rates are an attempt to quantify that Kuroko No Basket phenomenon. However, since the computation ended up being a percentage of a percentage, the values are very small. This is something I would like to improve in future versions of the HIMdex.

Finally, to generate the HIM groups (similar players), I also used total plus minus and minutes per game.

Summary:

The HIMdex rankings are based off of the HIMdex scores of players in a given season. The HIMdex score is computed using the percentiles of the metrics described in the previous section.

The computation is broken down this way:

• 30% Total Plus Minus Percentile
• 30% Bucket Contribution Rate Percentile
• 30% Stop Contribution Rate Percentile
• 5% Teammate Bucket Boost Contribution Rate Percentile
• 5% Teammate Stop Boost Contribution Rate Percentile

The maximum possible score is 100.

Currently, not much weight is put into the Boost Contribution Rate percentiles since the computation for those metrics are still being improved.

• Separate HIMdexes for the Regular Season and Playoffs.
• A more sophisticated way for computing the Teammate Bucket/Stop Boost Contribution Rate metrics.

• Name: Eric
• Bio: Cavs and LeBron fan since 2008. Cavs in 6.
• Claim to Fame: I got a "Go Cavs" from the legend himself, Austin Carr.

• GitHub: erictria

• All NBA statistics are acquired using the nba_api package, by Swar Patel.
• All player and team photos are from the NBA website.
• The logo used for the website is from Andscape's New NBA Logo article, by Aaron Dodson.
• All YouTube videos and X posts are linked to the original media. No copyright infringement intended.