Performance Shift

How it works

Performance Shift watches a player's job, not their points. Points swing night to night for reasons that do not last, but minutes, touches, and how often the offense runs through a player are decisions coaches make. When those move, something actually happened.

The model compares a player's recent stretch of games to the way they were used over the two years before it, judged against how much players normally differ from each other. A high number means the role genuinely moved: more minutes, more of the offense, a different shot diet. In football it watches opportunity the same way — carries and targets rather than yards — because opportunity is the part of a role that holds still long enough to measure.

Read it as a flag, never a forecast. Testing the model against history settled what the flag really means, and the second finding is the surprising one: flagged players' seasons really do stray further from their averages afterward, so a season line is a poor guide to a player mid-change — and a role change usually walks itself partly back. A player whose minutes cratered tends to get some back. The flag says look closer here. It does not say draw the line out further.