Paris have the ball. Something is going to happen to it, and roughly twice in every five possessions, the thing that happens is Nadir Hifi.
His Usage % this season is 41.9%. The typical rotation player in this league sits near 20%, which makes sense, because there are five men on the floor and only one ball.
Two numbers run through this piece, so here they both are. Usage % is the share of a team's possessions that end with one player. True Shooting % is how efficiently he scores when they do, counting two-pointers, threes and free throws together in one percentage. The first is how much work a man takes on, the second is what he does with it.
What the number actually counts
Usage % counts the possessions that end with you: your shot, your trip to the free-throw line, your turnover. Those are the three ways a player finishes a possession, and Usage % is your share of them.
Which means two things people often get wrong.
An assist does not count here. If you pass and your teammate scores, the possession ended with him, and he gets the credit in this particular column. Some of the best passers in the league sit low on this list.
And a turnover costs exactly what a missed shot costs. The possession ended with you either way. Usage % does not care how it went, only that it was yours.
The Usage % leaders in the EuroLeague right now
Every player with at least 80 minutes this season, ranked by the share of his team's possessions each one finishes.
- Nadir Hifi, Paris: 41.9% Usage %, 49.5% True Shooting %
- Carsen Edwards, Zalgiris: 33.6%, 52.8%
- Sylvain Francisco, Panathinaikos: 31.9%, 60.3%
- TJ Shorts, Valencia: 31.0%, 62.6%
- Patty Mills, ASVEL: 29.2%, 71.9%
- Kevin Punter, Barcelona: 29.1%, 65.1%
- Talen Horton-Tucker, Fenerbahce: 28.9%, 57.5%
- Mike James, Anadolu Efes: 28.9%, 49.2%
- Jean Montero, Olympiacos: 28.4%, 51.4%
- Vasilije Micic, Hapoel Tel Aviv: 28.2%, 43.2%
The average across those qualified players is 21.9%, so everyone on this list is carrying noticeably more than his share.
The number on its own tells you nothing
Here is the part worth your attention. Two players, nearly the same load, this season:
- Patty Mills, ASVEL: 29.2% Usage %, 71.9% True Shooting %
- Vasilije Micic, Hapoel Tel Aviv: 28.2% Usage %, 43.2% True Shooting %
Both are carrying roughly three possessions in ten. One is turning them into points at a rate almost nobody sustains. The other is not, at least not yet. Usage % told you how heavy the load is. True Shooting % tells you whether the man under it should be carrying it.
That is the whole reason the stat exists. On its own it is a measure of responsibility, not of quality.
The quiet end of the scale
Tomas Satoransky finishes 12.5% of Hapoel's possessions. He was an NBA starting point guard. He was the man everything went through at Barcelona.
Now he takes one possession in eight and the team is better for it, because his job this season is to find Micic and Elijah Bryant and let them finish. The possessions end with them. The decisions are often his.
A low number, in other words, can be a choice rather than a verdict. Some of the most valuable players in Europe live down here.
When nobody wants to let go
The interesting teams are the ones with two big numbers at once. Fenerbahce run Talen Horton-Tucker at 28.9% and Wade Baldwin at 27.2%, which is a lot of ball for two men to share, and they are 3-1. Olympiacos do the same with Jean Montero at 28.4% and Tyler Dorsey at 26.1%.
It can work. It also explains why those teams look different depending on who is on the floor, and why a coach's substitutions are really decisions about who gets to finish possessions tonight.
Back to Hifi. 41.9% is not a typo and it is not a compliment or an insult. It is a description: Paris have built their offense around one man taking two of every five chances. His True Shooting % is 49.5%. You can decide for yourself whether that is a plan or a problem, and the honest answer after four games is that nobody knows yet.
The full definition and the formula are on the stat page, with the benchmarks for every role. To see who is scoring, passing and shooting behind these numbers, the Leaderboard ranks the league stat by stat.
