Methodology

How every number on ELSTATSLAB is calculated, and how to read it.

Reading the Match Center

The match header

Each team shows its rank, its record and its last five results. The rank comes from the official standings. In the last five results, a green square is a win, a red square is a loss, and the most recent game is on the right. In the postseason, the record is replaced by the series score.

Before a regular season game

The left side shows the Season table (ORTG, DRTG, NETRTG, REB%, AST%) and the Where the game can swing block. The right side shows a radar of the two teams over their last five games, to compare current form with the season figures on the left. From Round 13, small bars inside the Season cells also show how the last five games compare with the season: the dot is the season value, the end of the line is the last five games, green when better and red when worse.

Where the game can swing picks the three most telling battles between one team's attack and the other team's defense, on the Four Factors: shooting (eFG% against Opp eFG%), turnovers (TOV% against Opp TOV%), rebounding (OREB% against DREB%) and free throws (FT Rate against Opp FT Rate). The figures and ranks are the ones of the Team Rankings tab. A battle is picked when the gap between the two sides is large, when one of them stands out from the rest of the league (a 1st or a last place weighs a lot), or when strength meets strength.

• EDGE: one side wins the battle. The triangle points towards that team, in its colour, and its cell is outlined when its own number is a real strength.
• CLASH: two strengths face each other, with no clear winner.
• EVEN: no meaningful gap.

Two colour logics. In the Season table, the colour compares the two teams with each other: green is the better of the two values. In Where the game can swing, the colour shows where each number ranks among all teams of the league: green is near the top, red near the bottom.

The comparison tables

For games already played and for the postseason, two tables sit side by side.

Season covers every game the two teams have played this season up to that round.

The table on the right depends on the game. Before tip off it shows Last 5: the five most recent games each team played before that round, which reflects current form. Once the game has been played it shows This Game: the numbers of that game only.

Every figure is computed on totals, not by averaging game by game. For example, a team's ORTG is its total points divided by its total possessions, so a game with more possessions weighs more than a short one.

Colors. In each row, green marks the better of the two values and red the weaker one. The larger the gap between the teams, the stronger the color.

Δ is the value of the left team minus the value of the right team. It is not flipped for metrics where lower is better. For DRTG and TOV%, a negative Δ therefore means the left team is doing better.

Radar. The toggle above the tables shows the same comparison as a shape. Each metric is placed on a fixed scale, and DRTG and TOV% are flipped, so a bigger shape is always a better profile.

The metrics

Win probability and Match edge

The bar under the tables appears for games that have not been played yet. It is called Win probability in the regular season and the Play-In, and Match edge in the playoffs and the Final Four.

Regular season

Step 1: team profiles. For each team, the model builds a profile made of its offensive rating, its defensive rating, its pace and how much its scores vary from one game to the next. The profile mixes this season's games with the previous season's. The weight of this season grows with every game played and reaches 100% after 12 games. A team with no previous season in the EuroLeague is pulled toward the league average instead, so that two or three games cannot dominate the estimate.

Step 2: the simulation. The model estimates how many points each team is expected to score against this specific opponent, using its own attack, the opponent's defense and the pace of the game. It then plays the game 10,000 times, drawing a random score for each team around those expectations. This is a Monte Carlo simulation: repeat a random experiment many times and count how often each outcome happens. The share of simulated games won by a team is its simulation result.

Step 3: three signals on a neutral court. The simulation result is not used alone. The probability on a neutral court combines three signals (weights rounded):

1. Season performance (50%). 60% of this signal is the simulation result and 40% is built from each team's win percentage, mixed with the previous season in the same way as the profiles.
2. Head to head history (31%). The results of the last four seasons between the two teams. The average margin is turned into a probability, and the more meetings there are, the more this signal counts. With fewer than four meetings, it stays neutral.
3. Style matchup (19%). The gap in net rating (offensive rating minus defensive rating) between the two teams.

Step 4: home court. Home court advantage is applied last. It moves the probability toward the home team by the edge observed in past games: home teams won 823 of the 1,298 regular season games played from 2022 to 2025 (63.4%). Two teams of equal strength therefore get about 63% for the home team.

The final probability is always kept between 2% and 98%.

Play-In, Playoffs and Final Four

These games use the earlier version of the model. The profile of each team comes from postseason games of the last four seasons, and falls back to the regular season when a team has too few. The model plays the game 10,000 times, drawing a random score for each team from its own profile each time. The result is combined with four signals: current season performance, head to head history over the last four seasons, home court advantage (a fixed bonus, larger than in the regular season and removed at the Final Four because games are played on a neutral court) and style matchup.

In a playoff series, the results of the games already played are added as a fifth signal, and games played later count more than earlier ones. The weight of this signal grows with each game: 20% after one game, 35% after two, 45% after three, 50% after four and 55% after five or more. The other signals share the remaining weight.

How to read it. A 54% probability means that, according to the model, the team wins about 54 games out of 100 in this situation. It is an estimate of likelihood, not a prediction of the result. The model works from team level results only: it does not know about injuries, lineups or rest days.

---

Reading Game Flow

Game Flow appears in the Match Center once a game has been played. It has three parts: a chart of the score margin, the biggest scoring runs, and the best five man lineup of each team.

The colors

Game Flow always uses two colors. Blue is the home team and red is the away team, in the chart, in the runs and in the Best 5 cards. They are not the clubs' own colors.

The chart

The line shows the score margin, calculated from the play by play as home team points minus away team points. A new point is recorded every time the margin changes.

The zero line is a tie. Above it, shaded in blue, the home team leads. Below it, shaded in red, the away team leads. The further the line is from zero, the bigger the lead. The vertical axis, labeled Point differential, shows the size of the margin without a sign, so use the zero line and the colors to know who is ahead. The team codes on the left of the chart (blue at the top for the home team, red at the bottom for the away team) remind you which side is which.

The horizontal axis is not a clock. It follows the sequence of scores, one step for each change in the margin. A quarter can therefore look longer or shorter than another depending on how many times the margin changed during it. Vertical lines mark the start of each quarter (Q2, Q3, Q4), and dashed lines mark the overtime periods (OT1, OT2 and so on).

Scoring runs

A run is a stretch where one team scores and the opponent does not score at all. Only runs of at least 9 unanswered points are marked. When several runs of the same team overlap, only the largest one is kept.

Every run is highlighted on the chart with a band in the color of the team that made it, labeled with its size in points. Below the chart, the Biggest Runs panel lists the three largest ones, each with the team code, the size of the run and its top contributor: the player who scored the most points for that team during the run. A three pointer counts for 3, a free throw for 1 and any other basket for 2. If two players are tied, both are listed.

How to read it. Runs point to the moments where the momentum swung, but a game can also be decided by many small stretches rather than one big run.

Best 5 by NetRtg

For each team, the site reconstructs which five players were on the court at every moment of the game: the starters are identified at tip off, then the lineup is updated with each substitution. The game is then split into stretches where the same five players stayed on the court, and each five is evaluated over all of its stretches combined.

For each five, the site measures:

• the time the five spent on the court together
• the points scored and allowed by the team while they were together
• the possessions of each side during that time, estimated from the play by play as field goal attempts + 0.44 × free throw attempts + turnovers − offensive rebounds

From these come the ratings:

The Best 5 is the five with the highest NetRtg among those that played enough time together. This minimum keeps a lineup that shared the court for only a few possessions from topping the list. From the 2026-27 season, a five needs at least 3 minutes together to be eligible. In 2025-26 the minimum was 2 minutes. If no lineup reaches the minimum in a game, the best available lineup is shown instead, so always check the time displayed. If the lineups of a team cannot be reconstructed reliably from the data, no Best 5 is shown for that team.

Each team gets one card, with the home team on the left and the away team on the right. It shows the points scored and allowed by the five, its NetRtg and its time on the court together, above the names of the five players.

How to read it. Higher is better, and a positive NetRtg means the five outscored the opponent over the same number of possessions. Lineups often share the court for only a few minutes, so their NetRtg can look very large. Always read it together with the time on court and the points scored and allowed.

Why the Best 5 can show a negative NetRtg

"Best" means the best of that team's lineups in this game, not necessarily a good one. If a team was outscored whenever its eligible fives were on the court, which happens most often to the losing team in a one sided game, even the top five can end with a negative NetRtg. It then simply means the least bad lineup of the night.

A second reason is that possessions are estimated separately for each side. A five that was only narrowly ahead on points can therefore show a slightly negative NetRtg. For the same reason, this NetRtg can differ slightly from the NETRTG in the Match Center comparison tables.

---

Reading Team Cards

Team Cards show a team's profile as percentiles. A percentile tells you where the team ranks compared with the other EuroLeague teams on a given stat. A 90th percentile means the team is ahead of about 90% of teams on that stat, and around the 50th percentile means league average territory. It is not a percentage of anything: a 63rd percentile does not mean 63%.

Percentiles are oriented so that a higher percentile is always better, including for DEF RTG and TOV%, where a lower raw value is better. The one exception is PACE: it describes a playing style, not a level of quality, so a high percentile means a fast team and a low percentile means a slow one.

Team Cards use the metrics defined in the Match Center section above (NET RTG, OFF RTG, DEF RTG, AST%, TOV%, OREB%) plus the following:

---

Team Rankings

Every team on one table, for the current regular season, using played games only. Click a column header to sort, and switch between the raw values and the percentiles.

Ratings. OffRtg and DefRtg are the points scored and allowed per 100 possessions, NetRtg is the difference. Pace is the number of possessions per game. Each of them is the average of the games played so far.

Four Factors. eFG% (shooting), TOV% (turnovers per possession), OREB% and DREB% (share of the available rebounds), and FT Rate (free throw attempts per field goal attempt), shown for the team and against it. The columns starting with Opp describe what opponents do against that team.

Percentiles. Each team is ranked among all teams, from 0 for the lowest to 100 for the highest, the same way as on the Team Cards, and the colours use the same five steps. Green is always the good side: for DefRtg, TOV%, Opp eFG% and Opp FT Rate a lower value is better. Pace is not coloured because it describes a style, not a quality. NetRtg, OffRtg, DefRtg, Pace, TOV%, OREB% and DREB% are calculated exactly like on the Team Cards, and the other ratios are totals over the season rather than averages of single games.

---

Impact Pulse

Impact Pulse is ELSTATSLAB's own proprietary metric. It is the only individual metric on the site, and it appears in the Match Center once a game has been played. It answers one question: how did the team perform with this player on the court compared with without him, in this single game?

How it is calculated

1. Split the game into two states for each player. Possessions with the player on the court, and possessions with him on the bench.
2. Measure the team in each state on six metrics: NETRTG, eFG%, REB%, AST%, OREB% and TOV%. These are the team metrics defined in the Match Center section, with the possession count described in the note below.
3. Take the On/Off delta for each metric: the team's value with the player on the court minus its value with him off. The delta is oriented so that a positive number always means a positive effect. For TOV%, fewer turnovers with the player on the court counts as positive.
4. Scale each delta. Each delta is divided by a fixed reference size for its metric, so that a swing in one metric can be added to a swing in another on a common footing.
5. Combine the six scaled deltas into a single composite score using fixed weights. NETRTG carries the most weight, followed by eFG%, then REB%, AST% and TOV%, and OREB% carries the least.
6. Apply a minimum threshold. From the 2026 season, a player needs at least 20 possessions on the court to receive a score. Games from the 2025 season use a minimum of 12.

A note on possessions

From the 2026 season, Impact Pulse counts possessions with the same formula as the Match Center: field goal attempts plus 0.44 times free throw attempts plus turnovers minus offensive rebounds. Games from the 2025 season were calculated earlier with a simpler count, field goal attempts plus turnovers, so 2025 figures can differ slightly from the Match Center tables. Within any game, ON and OFF are always measured with the same count, so the comparison stays fair.

What you see on the site

Each team shows the player with the highest Impact Pulse score in that game, flagged as the Difference Maker, with his score next to the label.

Under his name, the On/Off table compares the team's numbers with him ON the court and OFF it, and Δ is ON minus OFF. Green means the difference clearly helps the team, red means it clearly hurts, and grey means the difference is small. For DRTG and TOV%, where lower is better, the colors are flipped accordingly. The table shows eight metrics for context, while the score itself is built from the six listed above.

The Full ranking lists every player who reached the minimum threshold, ranked by score. On the downloadable image, the line under the table shows the possessions the player was on the court out of the possessions his team played in the game.

How to read it

Zero means no difference between the team's numbers with the player on the court and with him off it. A positive score means the team did better with the player on the court, and a negative score means the opposite. The scaling is fixed, so scores can be compared from one game to another, but games differ in length and pace, so compare with care.

Keep in mind what an On/Off metric cannot do. It measures what happened while a player was on the court, not what he caused alone: teammates and opponents on the floor at the same time matter, and a single game is a small sample. Read it as a signal of impact, not as a full judgment of a player's performance.

---

Reading Shot Maps

Shot Maps show where a team shoots and how well it converts. Free throws are not included. Every field goal attempt is drawn on the court: a green cross is a made shot and a red circle is a missed one. They appear in the Match Center once a game has been played, under Impact Pulse, and in the Shot Maps tab for a team over a competition and a season.

The five zones

Each shot belongs to exactly one zone:

Under each zone the map shows its FG% and the made shots out of attempts. A zone without any shot reads No shots. The map is cut about 9 m from the basket to stay readable, but every shot is counted in the numbers.

The colors

A zone is colored by comparing the team's FG% in that zone with the league average in the same zone, competition and season. Green is above the league average and red is below. The strongest colors correspond to a gap of about 7 points or more. Zones with few shots are pulled toward the league average, with a weight equivalent to 20 shots, so that a handful of attempts does not produce an extreme color. The numbers written on the map are always the raw ones. Until about ten games have been played in the competition, there is no reliable league average, and the color simply follows the FG%.

Heatmap

In the Shot Maps tab, a heatmap of shot density is available once a team has at least ten games in the selection. With fewer games, the density mostly reflects chance, so only the zone view is offered. In a single game view, only the zone view is shown.

---

Lineups

The Lineup tab and the Lineups section of the Match Center rank groups of players by how the team performed while they were on the court together. Units are built from the play by play: the starting five, then every substitution, so each stretch of the game is attributed to the five players who were actually on the floor.

NetRtg. NetRtg is ORTG minus DRTG, per 100 possessions. ORTG is the points the team scored while the unit was on the court per 100 of its possessions, and DRTG is the points it allowed per 100 of the opponent's possessions. A positive NetRtg means the team outscored the opponent with that unit on the floor. Possessions are estimated as field goal attempts plus 0.44 times free throw attempts plus turnovers minus offensive rebounds.

Minutes. The time between two substitutions is credited to the unit that was on the court. A game adds up to 40 minutes per team, plus 5 minutes for each overtime.

Duos and trios. They are not tracked separately. Every five man unit contains 10 duos and 10 trios, and their minutes, points and possessions are summed across all the five man units in which those players shared the court. A duo or trio therefore includes every five it played in, not one specific lineup.

Minimum samples. Short stretches swing a lot, so units must clear a minimum before they appear:

On a season or a group of rounds, the trio and duo minimums grow with the number of games the team played in the selection. The slider lets you lower or raise the minimum minutes.

Best and worst. Units are ranked by NetRtg, with minutes together as the tie breaker. On a single match, the best and worst five only compare units that cleared the minimum above, so a team can have only one qualifying unit, in which case no worst five is shown. A duo or trio that does not reach its minimum shows as not enough minutes together.

How to read it. NetRtg over a few minutes is volatile: one hot three point streak can move it by dozens of points. Prefer units with more minutes and more games, and treat single match numbers as a snapshot, not a verdict.