RegressedHoops

Since the 2000-2001 season, play-by-play data has been made available to the public, leading to a whole new category of basketball statistics. These are known as plus/minus statistics, which allow you to measure a player's overall impact on and off the court. Measuring on court and off court impact is a good way to measure the offensive value of a player (we still have ways to go to measure defense well); while not perfect, it does give us a fresh new look compared to box score data when viewed in the proper context. This is because is theoretically accounts for everything a player did on the court rather than just outcome-based events (e.g. shooting a shot).

I looked at on-off court offensive data from all players since 2001 through basketball-reference.com in order to determine the greatest seasons since that time, in terms of offensive impact. I had two main filtering criterion before actually coming up with a list: 1) The player must have played at least 2500 minutes (~52 games worth of minutes). This is to address sample size concerns. 2) The player must have at least a usage rate of 25% or higher to ensure they had a significant role in the offense.

Here are the Top 10 seasons since 2001:

Top 10 seasons since 2001 in terms of offensive on/off impact

A "+" is a positive contribution in each of the columns except TOV%, in which a "-" is desired (you want to lower your teams TOV% when you are on the court). Right off the bat, we can see Kobe at #1 on the list; it gives us an idea of just how good he was in his prime. The difference between his +/- in ORTG and the +/- of the second best player on his team is also by far the largest amongst the players listed here (telling us that the load he had to carry was the most). Overall, Kobe in 2006 likely had the best offensive season in the last 15 years with all things considered. Next on the list, we can see Tracy McGrady who had a very good 2003 season but unfortunately was never the same player due to injuries. Furthermore, we have Nash appear twice on the list; he certainly had a huge impact on his teams offense in the time range he won his 2 MVPs in. Chris Paul appears twice as well for his 2008 and 2009 seasons, considered by many to be the 2 best seasons ever by a PG. Shaq finishes the list off for his performance during the 2000-2001 season. Shaq has the biggest impact in his team's FG% amongst the players listed. Unfortunately this was the first season play by play data began being recorded as it would have been interesting to see his impact in the 1999-2000 season (his absolute prime). To sum up, we can definitely see how good each of these players were in their primes. They are the best offensive players since the Michael Jordan era, in some order or the other.