A novel approach in evaluating efficiency of basketball players

Abstract

Contemporary business, and thus sports, should take advantage of statistical and mathematical methods for the assessment of efficiency. In this paper efficiency evaluation will be conducted on NBA players using data envelopment analysis and distance based analysis. These efficiency measurement methods are performed in order to show that the economic factor is important and widely recognized as one of the major parameter which indicates the efficiency of an NBA player that can be used by management or a decision maker. Data envelopment analyses (DEA) is non parametric method that is primarily used for the purpose of evaluating the efficiency of non-profit units. DBA measures efficiency based on the I-distance metrics. In this paper 26 NBA player were evaluated. This analysis provides the efficiency and rank of each player, not only obtained by DEA and DBA, but with NBA efficiency evaluation methods. Furthermore, official NBA efficiency evaluation methods are compared with abovementioned methods.