- APEX— Adjusted Per-Possession Efficiency Index
- The composite player rating produced by the APEX Hoops pipeline. APEX combines stint-level plus-minus with leverage weighting, per-player recency adjustment, and teammate/opponent strength normalization to produce a single per-36-minute number per (player, position).
- APEX/36
- APEX expressed as net points per 36 minutes of play. League average is ≈ 0. Star players cluster +3 to +7. The metric is positional — a player who has played both Forward and Center has separate APEX/36 ratings at each.
- Stint
- A continuous span of game time in which the same 10 players are on the floor. APEX is built from millions of stints across every regular-season, play-in, and playoff game since 2003-04. Each stint has a duration, a point differential, and a leverage value.
- Leverage adjustment
- An additional weight applied to high-leverage minutes — close games and late shot clock. Garbage-time minutes count for less; every season type (regular season, play-in, playoff) is weighted on the same per-stint scale.
- Recency adjustment
- Per-player tapered weighting that makes recent seasons count more than older ones. The taper is calibrated per-player based on stint volume, so high-minutes veterans don't have their entire career averaged equally with their current form.
- Teammate/Opponent adjustment
- A simultaneous regression that corrects for lineup strength. A player who logged minutes against bench units has their raw plus-minus deflated; a player who consistently faced starters has it inflated.
- Per-36
- All APEX bridge metrics are normalized to a 36-minute pace so high-volume starters and low-minute role players can be compared on the same scale.
- Position assignment (height-first rule)
- Each stint is assigned positions by lineup geometry, not by NBA.com listings. Within a 5-player lineup: tallest player = C (tiebreak heaviest, then highest career RPG); shortest of the remaining four = G1 (tiebreak lighter, lower RPG); lowest height × weight of the remaining three = G2 (tiebreak shorter, lighter); the last two players = F. This is scheme "3pos_v3_tallest_shortest_hwguard".
- Qualified minutes
- A player must have logged at least 2,000 career minutes at a given position for that position to count toward their "Per Player" weighted-average APEX and to be eligible for that slot on the Optimal depth chart. Below that threshold, the position is shown as italic/grayed ("Unqualified") and is excluded from team weighted-average composites.
- Tier scale
- Players are grouped into 7 tiers by per-player APEX rank: First Team (1–5), Second Team (6–10), Third Team (11–15), All-Star (16–24), Starter (25–150), Rotation (151–240), Reserve (241+). Tier boundaries are recomputed daily from active qualified players.
- Bridge metrics
- The four intermediate values that decompose an APEX/36 row: raw plus-minus per 36, leverage adjustment, recency ("age") adjustment, and teammate/opponent adjustment. They sum (with weights) to the final APEX/36. Pro plan members can see bridge metrics on the leaderboard and in CSV exports.
- Plus-minus
- Point differential while a player is on the floor, rate-normalized to per-36. APEX uses possession-weighted plus-minus from stint data, not the box-score per-game plus-minus reported by NBA.com.
- Active player
- A player whose name appears on the current NBA.com active roster (CommonAllPlayers with is_only_current_season=1) AND who has logged at least one stint in the current season. Retired players keep their historical APEX rows but are flagged inactive and excluded from tier-boundary computation.
