HOW WE SCORE TRADES
A team’s score counts only what its acquired players did in its uniform. Whatever those players did before the trade, or for any team that came after, belongs to someone else’s ledger.
THE FORMULA
For each player a team received:
+ (Playoff Win Shares × 1.5)
+ Championship Bonus (contribution-weighted)
+ Accolade Bonus
Sum the players. Compare the sums. The larger one wins — but only past a 1.5-point margin. Inside that margin we call it even, because a single rotation season can swing it.
WIN SHARES
Dean Oliver’s stat. It divides team wins among the players who produced them. One Win Share is roughly one win. The data goes back to 1977.
The number is team-dependent on purpose: a 25-point scorer on a 22-win team has fewer wins to claim than the same player on a 55-win team.
We track Box Plus/Minus but don’t use it in the grade. It is the metric for shorter windows — early-career players, partial seasons, anywhere playoff Win Shares haven’t accumulated yet.
PLAYOFF WIN SHARES × 1.5
The same calculation, applied to the postseason, weighted by half again. A trade that took its team to the conference finals produced more than one that ended on a Tuesday in April.
CHAMPIONSHIP BONUS
A title is worth five points, distributed by playoff workload. Rings count for the whole roster, weighted by who did the work.
ACCOLADE BONUS
Awards catch what the box score misses. The defensive side of Win Shares is the weakest part of the metric, so DPOY and All-Defensive carry more weight than their place in the league hierarchy would suggest. MVP and Finals MVP carry the most, because they describe the player the trade actually delivered.
| Award | Bonus | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| MVP | +5.0 | Carried the league. Captures dominance the box score understates. |
| Finals MVP | +3.0 | Best player on the biggest stage. The most trade-relevant award we have. |
| DPOY | +2.5 | Primary correction for the weakest part of WS. |
| All-NBA 1st Team | +2.0 | Top five. |
| ROY | +1.5 | Immediate impact. Relevant for graded picks. |
| All-NBA 2nd Team | +1.2 | Top ten. |
| Sixth Man | +0.8 | A role WS handles, but the award marks the player the league agreed on. |
| All-NBA 3rd Team | +0.7 | Top fifteen. |
| MIP | +0.5 | A breakout. |
| All-Defensive Team | +0.5 | Defensive credit beyond DPOY. |
| All-Star | +0.3 | Half popularity, half merit. Repeated selections matter more than the first. |
| All-Rookie Team | +0.2 | Minor signal. |
Awards are subjective, but they capture a league consensus about a player’s season.
WHY WIN SHARES
We tested every public alternative.
- PER: Overweights volume scoring. The field has moved past it.
- VORP: Correlates with WS at about 0.85, but does not factor in team success, essential to evaluating the success of a trade.
- BPM: Per-possession rate stat. Does not factor in team success.
- EPM, RAPTOR, LEBRON, DARKO: Proprietary, retired, or only available since 2014.
Win Shares is the only public metric that goes back to the merger and ties production to team outcomes. Both of those mattered.
DATA SOURCES
All from Basketball Reference. Stats count only after the trade, on the acquiring team.
- Regular season: 23,500+ player-seasons (1977–present)
- Playoffs: 9,100+ player-seasons
- Championships: 49 verified champions
- Accolades: 2,500+ awards
- Trades: 1,935 (1976–present)
- Salary contracts: 15,370 (1984–2031, 2,102 unique players)