The screener

What it is. A way to see how a player’s numbers change in a situation: on the road, on the second night of a back-to-back, when a teammate is out, against a slow team. Every number comes from real box scores, and you can open the games behind it.

The sentence at the top is the question. Who is one player, everyone, or everyone playing tonight. Stat is points, rebounds, assists and the rest. Split is the situation. Refine holds the seasons, playoffs, a second condition, minimum games and the player filters. “Last 5 seasons (2022-23 → now)” is the default window; “Career” reaches back to 2003-04; regular season only unless you tick “+ playoffs”.

Read the row. Usually is his average in his latest season with 20+ games (10+ this season). Shift is how much he differs in the situation from his other games in the same season. In situation is his plain average in those games. Tap “games” to see every one.

A worked example. Open Who and type LeBron James, set Split to Road games and, under Refine, Seasons to Career (open it). The table shows each of his seasons since 2003-04: his road games that year, his average in them, and the shift against his home games that same season. The line under the shift says in how many seasons the shift was up. 24 seasons, one screen, every game behind it.

How to read a shift and the strength words. A shift of “+3.1 pts” means he averaged 3.1 pts more in the situation than in his other games that season (then the seasons are pooled). The word next to it says how much to trust it: strong: 15+ games and a shift at least 2.5 standard errors (its margin of error) from zero; notable: 10+ games and at least 1.6 standard errors; could be noise: 10+ games but a weaker gap; few games: 5–9 games; tiny sample: under 5 games; small gap: a clear but small gap (under 0.75 pts, or under 4% of his usual if that is bigger): not worth acting on. A strong or notable gap below that floor is called a small gap instead. “Up in 3 of 4 seasons” tells you whether it held year after year (seasons with 8+ situation games count; under 60% agreeing reads “varies by season”).

What it is not. Not a prediction, not a pick, not a model. Past box scores only, described plainly. A shift in old seasons may not hold today; that is why the default stops at five seasons and the career table shows each season on its own. Lines from sportsbooks appear as facts, never as a recommendation.