The problem with points per game
A team that scores 60 points in 70 possessions is playing better offense than a team that scores 65 points in 85 possessions — even though the second team's box score looks bigger. Points per game rewards playing fast almost as much as it rewards playing well. If you're comparing your team to an opponent, or your team in October to your team in February, points per game is comparing two different sample sizes and calling it the same measurement.
What points per possession actually measures
Points per possession (PPP) answers one question: when your team has the ball, how many points do you get? It's just points scored divided by the number of possessions — a possession ending on a make, a miss with a defensive rebound, a turnover, or the end of a quarter. Score 1.05 or better and you're running an efficient offense regardless of pace. Score 0.85 and something's wrong, even if the final score looked fine because the game was a track meet.
A useful gut-check scale for high school ball: under 0.85 is a real problem, 0.85 to 1.00 is average, and 1.05 or better is a genuinely good offensive possession-by-possession. These aren't hard cutoffs — your league's pace and level shift them — but they're a reasonable place to start until you've built your own baseline across a season.
Two numbers that go with it
PPP tells you the possession is working or it isn't. Two companion numbers tell you why:
- Effective field goal % (eFG%) — regular shooting percentage treats a make from three the same as a make from two, which understates how valuable the three actually is. eFG% credits the extra value:
(makes + 0.5 × three-point makes) ÷ attempts. A team shooting 40% on all twos and 40% on all threes doesn't have the same offense — eFG% shows that gap. - True shooting % (TS%) — folds free throws into the same picture, since a trip to the line is also a scoring possession:
points ÷ (2 × (field goal attempts + 0.44 × free throw attempts)). This is the closest single number to "how efficiently does this team turn a possession into points, everything included."
Where this actually helps you as a coach
Raw stats tell you a play scored 6 points tonight. PPP tells you whether it's working — 6 points on 3 trips (2.00 PPP) is a set to run again immediately; 6 points on 8 trips (0.75 PPP) is a set that's quietly killing your offense while looking fine on the stat sheet. The same split by defensive coverage tells you which look is actually giving you trouble — not which one you think is giving you trouble, which are often two different answers once you count possessions instead of points.
Tracking it without a stat service
You don't need special software to start — a possession tally on a clipboard (make a hash mark for each possession, note the points) gets you a real PPP number by halftime. What you lose doing it by hand is the split: PPP against Man vs. their 2-3, PPP by which play you called, PPP with your bench unit in vs. your starters. That's where it stops being clipboard-friendly and starts being worth automating.
What Courtside AI adds
Every possession you tag — two taps, defense once, outcome once — rolls up automatically into PPP by play, by coverage, by lineup, tonight and across the whole season. The huddle tells you which play is working against what they're showing right now, not what you remember from October.