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Rating, predicting the on-court impact for every NBA player

Who have been the most impactful players this season? Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo

ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) provides a way to understand the contributions of NBA players to winning -- on each end of the floor. Using both box-score and play-by-play data, RPM estimates each player's on-court impact on team performance, measured in net point differential per 100 offensive and defensive possessions.

RPM was developed to be an improvement over standard plus-minus stats. That's in part because, unlike standard plus-minus stats, RPM takes into account teammates, opponents and additional factors, such as the score of each game. It also uses individual stats to create a Bayesian prior for each player.

Midway through the 2018-19 season, we are publishing a team-by-team list of the RPM leaders so far, showing which players have made the greatest impact. We are also including each player's predictive rating going forward.

To see RPM for past seasons, go here. To learn more about RPM, go here.

Key

  • RPM: Player's estimated on-court impact on team performance, measured in net point differential per 100 offensive and defensive possessions.

  • ORPM: Player's estimated on-court impact on team offensive performance.

  • DRPM: Player's estimated on-court impact on team defensive performance.

  • WINS: An estimate of the number of wins each player has contributed to his team's win total, factoring in his RPM and possessions played.

  • PREDICT: Predictive or multiyear RPM. Uses several seasons of data for each player -- while also taking into account aging factors -- to estimate what his contributions will be for the rest of the the season.

All teams sorted by predictive RPM