Women Wednesdays: The Box Score

  Now that you ladies know have learned the frontcourt and backcourt positions in basketball and their respective responsibilities, I thought it would be appropriate to teach you all an easy and general way to assess if the players are fulfilling their assignment and are having productive games. By reading the box score, a chart showing the statistics of each player in the game, you can conclude how well the players on your team, or any given team, are doing without even watching the game. Though a box score contains a lot of information, for the sake of quick assessing I'm going to focus on five main categories: points, minutes, assists, rebounds, and field goals made-attempted.
  It is obvious what you will find in the points (PTS) column. However, every player is not expected to have 20 points per game.

• At any given time in the game if the point guard, shooting guard, or small forward has 20 points they have likely had a decent night (depends on the player's normally activity).
• Note: Today's basketball deviates from the traditional set up so some teams may look for those any given 20 from the shooting guard, small forward, and power forward.
• In some cases 20 may be relatively low (for players like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Kobe Bryant), and in other cases 20 points might be a high scoring night.

  Miami Heat point guard Mario Chalmers definitely can knock down shots but he isn't heavily relied on to score only averaging 8.3 points per game. However, when you look at the box score and see he had 26 points, with 5 out of 6 of the shots being 3-pointers in Miami's win over the Pacers on Sunday, you can conclude that he had not just a decent but a great game. Chalmers did all of that in 33 minutes which is pretty efficient. Minutes (MIN) compared to the number of points scored for the given player is also a column to look at to see how efficient they are being. If an All-Star player like Dwyane Wade has 20 points and played all 48 minutes of the game, you can conclude that he had just a decent shooting night, though he may have been active in other areas.
  The next column to look in is the assist (AST) column.

• An assist is credited to the player who passes his teammate the ball before a made basket (Only one player can be granted an assist per made basket).
• The column that a great traditional point guard will excel in (Rajon Rondo averaged 11.1 assists this season)
• The shooting guard and small forward can also have a high number of assist in a productive night as well depending on the style of play and skills of that player. 

  After all it is the point guard's job to facilitate so you can expect a large number of assists meaning that he was getting his teammates the ball at the right time and place. If Rondo had a 14 points,12 assists game, you can conclude that he had a good night.
  The rebounds (REB) column is where the frontcourt players are excepted to excel more, the center and power forward in particular.

• Last night Lakers center Dwight Howard scored 39 points along with 16 rebounds in a win against the Magic. 
• 39 points would be outstanding for a player at any position but the 16 rebounds especially means that Dwight stopped a potential minimum of 32 points LA didn't give the Magic a second chance to score and a minimum potential 32 points the Lakers scored from getting the ball back.

 The final column to look at is the field goals made-attempted (FGM-A).

• This column, for jump shooters especially, is probably the best and most objective way to come to a conclusion on the game a player had without watching the game.
• Tells how many shots he made (FGM) compared to the number of shots he attempted overall (FGA). 
• The benchmark to measure shot efficiency is about 50% (Shooting 50% and above, the player had a good shooting game).

 Mario Chalmers had 26 points in 33 minutes on 7/9 shooting (the 7/9 is his FGM-A). That means he made about 78% of his shots which is excellent. It's easy to think your favorite player had a good game  because they finished with 22 points but this column can expose him. He may have attempted significantly more shots than he made which isn't good. This is not to say that under 50% means he had a bad game but he just wasn't very efficient with his shots.

  If a player records a double-double, or even better triple-double, you can easily summarize what you've gathered from the box score.

• Double-Double: a player has scored double digits (10 or more) in two of these categories: points,  assists, rebounds, blocks, or steals. Most commonly seen as points and rebounds or points and assists. (Most likely averaged by frontcourt players)
• Triple-double: a player has scored double digits in three of those same categories. Most commonly seen as points, rebounds, and assists.

For some players, like LeBron James, a double-double is pretty much a normal night. Either way though, if a player records a double-double or triple-double in a game, it is safe to say he had a productive game. 

Sources: ESPN