Who’s the best FIBA 3x3 World Tour player? A statistical analysis

MIES (Switzerland) – The World Tour regular season MVP Disco Domo Jones? The number 1 player in the world Dusan Bulut? The guy who was number 1 before an ankle injury Karlis Lasmanis? We looked at a new stat called Player Value to try to understand who’s statistically the best player on the Tour.

First of all, Player what?!? The Player Value is a new metric – not too dissimilar to the Player Efficiency concept in basketball – to determine the impact of a player on the court. We add up all the positive contributions (shooting efficiency [points scored x (points scored/number of shots attempted] + blocks + key assists + buzzer beaters + rebounds (divided by 2) minus the main negative contribution (turnovers [missed shots are already taken into account in the shooting efficiency).

For all the maths nerds:
P-VAL = S-VAL + BS + KAS + BZR - TO + (REB/2)

To eliminate small sample size and overly reward those who played a lot this year, we only took into account the players who played at least 5 games on the World Tour in 2019 and looked at player value per game.

Here’s the Top 10:
1. Dusan Bulut (Novi Sad, SRB) 7.9
2. Aurelijus Pukelis (Sakiai Gulbele, LTU) 7.1
3. Robbie Hummel (Princeton, USA) 6.3
4. Lucas Dussoulier (Nantes Aderim, FRA) 6.1
5. Karlis Lasmanis (Riga Ghetto, LAT) 5.9
6. Marijus Uzupis (Sakiai Gulbele, LTU) 5.8
7. Kyle Landry (Edmonton, CAN) 5.7
8. Kareem Maddox (Princeton, USA) 5.5
9. Disco Domo Jones (NY Harlem, USA) 5.5
10. Mihailo Vasic (Liman, SRB) 5.4

 
Bulut is also number 1 in the world in the FIBA 3x3 Individual World Ranking. As a matter, all 10 players on that list are in the Top 25 in the Rankings, except Dussoulier, who only played 6 games on the World Tour this year (and is ranked #74 in the world).

Applying the same formula to last season on the World Tour, Bulut also led all players in that category (with an even better 8.2 mark). Jones (4th) and Hummel (7th) were the other 2 players who made the top 10 in back-to-back years (Pukelis, Dussoulier, Uzupis and Landry did not play on the Tour in 2018 to be fair).

Back to 2019, if we extend the sample to the entire pro circuit (meaning including challengers besides the World Tour), Bulut no longer ranks number 1 in player value.

 
The 22-year-old Russian World Champion (in U23 category) Ilia Karpenkov (Korolev, RUS) averaged a crazy 8.3 in player value in 18 games in the pro circuit last year (Bulut was 2nd with 7.7). Two other players entered the Top 10 with the inclusion of challengers: 

- Stanislav Sharov (Gagarin, RUS) 4th with 6.7
- Igor Tratnik (Kranj, SLO) 7th with 6.1

What surprised you the most? Who’s too high? Who’s too low? What do you think of the player value as a way to measure a 3x3 player’s value? Let us know on our social media channels @FIBA3x3.

Make sure you come back to FIBA.basketball on Monday for a Player Value of the FIBA 3x3 Women’s Series athletes.

FIBA