To recap, gravity score measures how closely a player's defender sticks to him off the ball. Higher gravity scores generally belong to bigs because their primary defender must stay close and also protect the basket. On the other hand, guards typically have lower gravity scores simply because defenders have more liberty to shade off their guy on the perimeter. But elite shooters typically generate more attention off the ball.
Then there's distraction score, which quantifies how much a player's defender is willing to help off the ball to stop the ball handler. The worse he is as a shooter, the more likely his defender will be distracted by the ball handler. To identify the most effective floor-spacers in the NBA, I created a composite score that combines the two metrics. The result is what I've called "respect rating," which has now been translated to a 1-to-100 scale with 100 being the most magnetic (think sharpshooters) and 1 being least magnetic (think non-scoring bigs).
And now, as we turn the calendar to 2015, we find that teams are still gluing themselves to Curry like no other. Who else has otherworldly floor-spacing ability? Here are the top 10 in respect rating for the 2014-15 season.
- Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors | Respect rating: 97.9 Gravity score: 97.3 | Distraction score: 98.4 Last season rank: 1st
Glance at a team's scouting report on Curry and the headline probably reads something like, "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT LEAVING THIS GUY OPEN OR YOU'LL GET CUT." His homing-missile jumper and lightning-quick release make defenses glue themselves to Curry when he's playing off the ball, which might explain why he's shooting a career-low 38.5 percent from downtown. Granted, that's still a strong conversion percentage, but the amazing thing is that he's shooting better on 3s off the dribble (40.7 percent) than off the pass (36.8 percent). Judging by how defenses guard him, no one has more respect than this guy.
.
