On-Off Court Analysis

On-Off Court Analysis

On-off analysis measures team performance with and without specific players. This reveals individual impact on team success beyond box score statistics.

On-Off Differential

Formula: (Net Rating On Court) - (Net Rating Off Court)

Positive differential indicates team performs better with player on court. Elite players show +8 to +15 point differentials.

Components of On-Off

• Offensive On-Off: Offensive rating difference (on vs off)
• Defensive On-Off: Defensive rating difference (on vs off)
• Net On-Off: Combined offensive and defensive impact

Teammate Dependencies

On-off can be inflated or deflated by teammate quality. Stars playing with poor bench units show artificially high on-off; role players alongside multiple stars may show negative on-off despite strong individual play.

Opponent Strength Adjustments

Advanced on-off metrics adjust for opponent strength, reducing noise from schedule variance and garbage time.

Garbage Time Filtering

Removing possessions with large score differentials (15+ points) improves on-off reliability by excluding non-competitive minutes.

Sample Size Considerations

On-off stabilizes with larger samples. Single-game or week-long on-off can be very noisy. Season-long on-off is more reliable.

Lineup On-Off Matrices

Matrix showing every two-player combination's on-off reveals which player pairs work well together and which combinations struggle.

Replacement Player Impact

Who plays when a player sits matters enormously. Backup quality heavily influences on-off differentials.