NBA
Pace and Space: How Possession Rates Quietly Rewired Everything We Measure in the NBA
The pace-and-space era, the metrics it forced into existence, the metrics it broke, and how to read a 2026 box score without 1996 instincts.
SportsHighLight · Author
Marcus Whitfield
Marcus Whitfield is the SportsHighLight NFL beat lead and Methods desk lead. He has been writing about football analytics for the better part of a decade and signs off on any piece that uses an advanced metric like EPA, CPOE, success rate, or pressure-adjusted EPA. Covers route concepts, coverage charts, and the gap between what a play looked like and what it actually did.
NFL
EPA Explained: How Expected Points Added Became the Lingua Franca of NFL Analytics
Expected Points Added (EPA), where it came from, how it works, where it breaks, and how to use it without becoming the worst guy...
NBA
NBA Advanced Stats: A Field Guide That Has Survived a Decade of Arguments
A field guide to the NBA advanced stats that actually pay rent: true shooting, usage rate, on/off, lineup data, and the all-in-ones — used...
WNBA
Defensive RAPM in the WNBA: Measuring What Counting Stats Miss
Defensive RAPM in the WNBA — what it measures, how it works, where the public versions break, and why every serious women's basketball evaluation...
Methods
Sports Analytics, Honestly: The Working Primer
A working primer on sports analytics for fans who have already watched a thousand games — the metrics that survive arguments, the places they...
WNBA
What WNBA On/Off Numbers Catch and What They Still Miss
A WNBA bench wing posts a +14 on/off split across the first 25 games of the season. The analytical Twitter…
NBA
Lineup Synergy: The Math of Why Some Five-Man NBA Units Click
Lineup synergy — what it actually measures, where it comes from, how the public data captures it, and the math of why some five-man...
NBA
Playoff Adjustment: How NBA Round 1 Reveals Regular-Season Mirages
A team that posts a +6 net rating across an 82-game regular season looks, on the page, like a contender.…
NBA
The Hot-Hand Fallacy: Forty Years of Argument, Then a Quiet Reversal
The hot-hand fallacy — what the original research claimed, what the corrected research shows, where the question still has uncertainty, and how to write...
WNBA
Reading the WNBA Draft Through Analytics: Models, Limits and Real Cases
The WNBA Draft compresses a year of college tape, scouting reports, and analytical projections into a single evening. Twelve top…