What is Offensive Rating? Basketball stat explainer

Offensive Rating (ORtg) is one of the most popular statistics to evaluate point production in basketball, and it's become much more popular in recent years.

Fans may wonder how it is calculated and why it is sometimes used instead of the less confusing, more common statistic of points per game. We discuss all of that and more in this article.

What is Offensive Rating?

Offensive Rating is a basketball statistic that normalizes a team's or player's points scored to 100 possessions.

For the individual player version, points created – which includes points and assists – are taken into account to determine how many points a player produces per 100 possessions.

Why is Offensive Rating important?

Evaluating a team's point production based on possessions rather than on a per-game basis allows analysts and fans to evaluate a team's ability to score without accounting for the influence of a game's pace.

Teams can have any number of possessions in a given game, so normalizing to 100 possessions allows people to view scoring within an identical sample size of scoring chances.

For example, the team that played at the fastest pace in the 2021/22 NBA season – the Minnesota Timberwolves with 100.9 possessions per game – also averaged the most points per game with 115.9. Because they had the most possessions, they had more opportunities to shoot, leading to more points scored.

But, when looking at the 2021/22 T-Wolves' Offensive Rating, it ranked eighth in the NBA at 114.3 points scored per 100 possessions. In that same season, the team with the highest Offensive Rating – the Utah Jazz at 116.7 – ranked just 22nd in pace (97.1 possessions per game), but their efficiency meant they were seventh in points per game (113.6).

Slower-paced teams usually attempt fewer shots per game which leads to fewer points per game, and vice-versa for faster-paced teams.

How does team Offensive Rating work?

Team ORtg takes a team's points per game average with the team's pace, and scales the team's points per game average to 100 possessions.

Team ORtg is more popular than the individual version because it's a more uniform version of points per game. Offensive Rating illustrates a team's offensive efficiency and ability, while the individual version is often impacted by how active a player is within his team's offense.

How does individual player Offensive Rating work?

A lot of math is involved to find a single player's Offensive Rating, but essentially, a player's number of points produced is divided by that player's individual total possessions on the court, and the number from that equation is then multiplied by 100.

Points produced accounts for the number of points a player creates through scoring or assisting. Calculating individual possessions is the longest and most difficult part of the equation, but, put simply, it accounts for any possession where the player in question attempts a field goal or a free throw, has an assist, or commits a turnover.

Individual ORtg is often impacted by usage rating. Usage rating calculates how often a possession finishes with a certain player scoring, attempting a shot, or committing a turnover, and a player with a high usage rating is viewed as the most important part of his team's offense.

A player with a higher usage rating may struggle to have a high offensive rating due to the player's high volume of points, shots, assists and turnovers.

Continuing to use the 2021/22 campaign as an example, five centers ranked in the top five of ORtg that season, but none had a usage rating over 25 percent. Meanwhile, MVP candidates Luka Doncic, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo were the top three in usage rating that season, but the high volume of scoring opportunities made them less efficient, hurting their respective Offensive Ratings.

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