Photo credit: Carlos Flores

Evaluating grassroots players by saving off all the box scores, calculating box plus-minus, and see what that reveals is something I have been doing for over a decade. I first started doing this back when I was writing for ESPN.com

At a later point I might write in explicit detail about the process, and how it could benefit any college team. But for now, this post is covering the top performers in the adidas 3SSB 16U league this past summer, and highlighting interesting observations purely from a statistical perspective. Is this ideal? No, in fact I just wrote about why that is the case. But when there are so many players to consider, and time is super valuable (specifically for college staffs), this is better than sitting down, watching way too much film, and travelling to all of these events. Using these stats should be the first pass for any coaching staff, and would save them so much time by preventing them from chasing down bad intel, and wasting time watching film trying to find a guy that pops that no one else sees.

The Top 10

The Full Spreadsheet

The Analysis

1  Specifically using leagues with play-by-play at this level to revise the coefficient of the box plus-minus to be calibrated for this level. Currently BPM using coefficient built on NBA play-by-play. It’s very good given our other options (which are basically nothing. PER isn’t usable. RAPM or something similar would only be available with play-by-play).

2  FIBA has his birthday listed as July 14th, 2009. I’m curious what the rules are on turning 17 in July while participating in the 15U league? Nothing personal against the kid, but definitely odd that he was on the best team in the league by far and wasn’t asked to go up to 16U. If you know more details, please let me know!