NBA Offensive Stats & Rankings

Ever heard the saying, "defense wins championships?" That's great and all, but offense wins NBA bets. No matter the team, your selection needs to have an effective offense if you want to cover the spread, bet on the OVER, or just win on a moneyline. 

The NBA stats pages here at Odds Shark focuses on the offensive stat categories that matter most when betting on. They're extremely relevant for your pre-game preparation, whether you're focusing on road scoring, home scoring, the most three-pointers made and more.

NBA Offensive Stats Categories

• Scoring – the highest-scoring teams might be good bets to go OVER the total.
• Road Scoring – these teams score the most points in road games.
• Home Scoring – same as above, except this category is for points scored on a team's home court.
• Field Goal Percentage – not always the highest-scoring, but the most efficient shooting teams.
• Free-Throw Percentage – low FT % teams offer a bigger risk of losing your OVER and spread bets, as these are "easy" points.
• Three-Pointers Per Game – teams that make a lot of three-point field goals per game can be good for OVER bets or a specific prop.
• Three-Point Percentage – three-point shooting accuracy is tracked here.
• Assists – teams that share the ball and have strong ball movement will record more assists.
• Offensive Rebounds – the teams that get the most offensive rebounds and second-chance opportunities.
• Turnovers – Turnovers track how many times you give the ball away to the opposition.

Score

The score column reflects the NBA teams who have the highest-to-lowest scoring average. The number next to each team tells us exactly how many points-per-game that team is scoring on average.

With the ever-growing pace of the NBA and the number of possessions increasing each and every year, we can only anticipate that these numbers will continue to rise. Gone are the days of grit and grind; teams want buckets.

Away Score

Similar to points-per-game, the Away Score lets us know how many points each team is averaging on the road. You’ll notice that in most cases, teams tend to average fewer points per game when away from their home arena.

It must be all that home cooking they’re missing out on -- that, or the fact that they are having to constantly travel from city to city while not being able to sleep in their own beds. In the words of Dorothy, “There’s no place like home.”

Home Score

The complete opposite of Away Score, Home Score indicates how many points each team is averaging on their home floor. Home-court advantage rings true in the NBA, which is usually reflected in most teams’ offensive scoring production.

Role players tend to score a little more at home as they feed off of the energy from the fans in the stands and the familiarity their home base provides.

Field Goal Percentage

A team’s field goal percentage is an indication of how efficient or inefficient they are at scoring on each shot attempt. If a team has a field goal percentage of 50 percent, then we know that team is hitting half of their shots taken.

The NBA is a make-or-miss league -- as the old Michael Scott saying goes -- wait, I mean Michael Jordan -- “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

Free-Throw Percentage

Somewhat similar to field goal percentage, a team’s free-throw percentage shows us how efficient or inefficient that team is at scoring from the foul line. These numbers can plummet in a hurry if a team has a low-percentage shooter racking up tons of fouls -- I'm looking at you, Shaq.

Three-Pointers Made

NBA teams are taking and making three-pointers at a much higher clip than we’ve seen ever before -- the 3PT offensive category tells us just how many three-balls each team is making per game.

With snipers like Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, and Trae Young pulling up from the logo, and big men like Brook Lopez or Kristaps Porziņģis spacing the floor now, just like points-per-game, we’ll likely see these numbers go up each season.

Three-Point Percentage

We now know NBA teams are valuing the three-point shot more than ever before, but their three-point percentages paint a better picture of just how efficient or inefficient they are from long-range.

Some teams, like the San Antonio Spurs for example, might not take a lot of three-pointers, but they do tend to hit at a higher rate than some of the other teams that are chucking on a nightly basis.

Assists

Pace, flow and tempo are what the modern NBA game is all about. Teams who share the rock and distribute the ball tend to play a prettier style of basketball by spreading the love so that everyone gets more touches, which typically leads to more open shots, thus more makes, and ultimately greater assist totals.

Teams who rely on their superstars to score the bulk of their points sometimes see a dip in these numbers, especially if that player is a ball-stopper. Sticky fingers or isolation-ball not only kills team chemistry, it has quite a negative impact on the distribution department as well.

Offensive Rebounds

The number of possessions in the NBA is everything and the teams that can find ways to create more possessions are definitely helping their cause. Offensive rebounding is one way in which to accomplish this. When a shot goes up, and it’s either off-line, maybe long or short, having a teammate there to clean up the mess is very valuable. Every team needs a garbage man!

Not only can a player go right back up with the ball for an easy score, they can draw a foul on the opposing team, or kick it out for an open look while the defense is still scrambling. Some teams place more of an emphasis on crashing the offensive glass, while others are more apt to sprint back on defense and protect their paint on the opposite end so teams don’t run out in transition on them.

Turnovers

Ball protection is key -- teams don’t want to give their opponents any additional possessions by coughing up the basketball. The number you see in the turnover column is how many times each team turns over the ball per game.

Ideally, the fewer turnovers, the better. Of course, this is a lot easier said than done, but those teams who have an elite point guard with primary ball-handling responsibilities have a bit of a leg up when it comes to taking care of the basketball.