Who's the best FIBA 3x3 Women's Series player? A statistical answer.

MIES (Switzerland) - The Women's Series MVP Migna Touré? The number 1 player in the world Laetitia Guapo? Last year's World Cup MVP JiaYin Jiang? We looked at a new stat called Player Value to try to understand who’s statistically the best player on the Series.

Reminder for those who didn't read us on Friday: 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 6 games at the Women's Series in 2019 and looked at player value per game.

Here’s the Top 10:
1. Michelle Plouffe (Canada) 7.4
2. Cyesha Goree (Hungary) 7
3. Mai Yamamoto (Japan U23) 7
4. Krystyna Filevych (Ukraine) 6.5
5. Katherine Plouffe (Canada) 6.4
6. Michaela Onyenwere (USA) 6.3
7. Bec Cole (Australia) 6.2
8. Ana Maria Filip (France) 6.1
9. Elisabeth Pavel (Romania) 6.1
10. Alice Kunek (Australia) 6.1

The correlation between the Player Value and the FIBA 3x3 Individual World Ranking is nowhere close what it was for the men. However this makes sense considering six of these players only competed 2 or 3 times at the Women's Series last year.

This said, it's not a surprise to see the #9 player in the world Michelle Plouffe leading the charge in Player Value. She would rank much higher in the rankings if it wasn't for a broken hand, which made her miss 3 stops last summer. She ranked top 6 in points, rebounds and key assists and was second to only Rae Lin D'Alie in triple fives on the season (at least 5 points, 5 rebounds and 5 highlights in the same game).

It's a family affair: the Plouffe Sisters actually both made the list, with Katherine 5th overall. 

 
Though only 3 of these 10 players are ranked inside the Top 10 in the Rankings, the other names sound very familiar:

- Cyesha Goree was on the World Cup Team of the Tournament
- Mai Yamamoto was the U23 World Cup MVP
- Bec Cole was the Asia Cup MVP and World Cup top scorer

By the way, the spectacular Yamamoto makes the Top 3 despite being listed at just 5ft. 5in. (1.65m).

 
In case you're wondering where are the other star players on the women's circuit, the World Cup 2018 MVP Rae Lin D'Alie (Italy) ranks 12th.

A little further down the list, last year's World Cup MVP JiaYin Jiang (China) and the number 1 player in the world Laetitia Guapo (France) are 15th and 16th respectively.

 
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.

Liked that analysis? Check out Part 1 focusing on FIBA 3x3 World Tour players.

FIBA