Isaac
Years ago
ShotScore - a way to judge the NBA's best scorers
Might be flawed but there's an attempt to quantify the NBA's best scorer(s) on Grantland:
No player scored more points close to the basket than LeBron James last season.
No player converted a higher percentage of his shots near the basket than LeBron James last year.
By overlaying players' shot constellations, we can estimate the expected total number of points that an average NBA shooter would produce, based on where he took his shots; then we can compare a particular player's actual yield against it.
For example, last season LeBron James attempted 1,354 shots. Using that league-wide baseline as our guide, if an average NBA shooter attempted this exact same set of 1,354 shots, he would produce a yield of 1,397 total points.
James actually yielded 1,628 points from that constellation, 231 more than expected. No player accumulated more points than expected than James.
Extra Points - A new way to understand the NBA's best scorers
Top three by the metric listed are Lebron, Durant and Curry.