NBA Breakout Seasons By The Numbers
There have been some wildly surprising breakout NBA seasons over the past 20 years. Players like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Victor Oladipo exploded onto the scene mid-way through their NBA careers and unexpectedly emerged as NBA All-Stars. There are so many questions related to NBA players having a breakout season: What even is a breakout season? Who had the best breakout season? What causes a player to have a breakout season? Can you predict who is going to have a breakout season? Well, if you are wondering the answer to some of these questions… keep reading.
How to Measure a Breakout Season?
A breakout season is when a player unexpectedly raises their game to a new level. The measurement I used to determine a players’ on court improvement is their increased Player Efficiency Rating (PER) year over year. This is a standard all-encompassing statistic created by John Hollinger.
There are several control parameters necessary to accurately assess a breakout season. To control for an NBA player’s obvious natural progression, the player had to be over 21 years old and be in the third year of his career or later. This accounted for players like Trae Young and Luka Doncic who improved their PER by 7 and 8 in their second season. Although they dramatically improved their game, their improvement was much less interesting than players like Bam Adebayo and Brandon Ingram’s breakout season. Ingram increased his PER by a lesser amount, but his growth was far more surprising, and is the type of player I am going to be investigating.
To control for fringe NBA players whose statistics are based on a small sample, the breakout season and the season prior had to have at least 1000 minutes. And the last important control I used was measuring the player’s PER change from their previous PER career high. This accounted for weird circumstances such as when Dwayne Wade improved his PER by nine from 2008 to 2009. Before 2008, Wade’s PER reached 28.9, so when his PER reached 30.4 in 2009, it shouldn’t be considered a breakout season. His improvement should be attributed to his injury-ridden down year in 2008.
Who are the NBA’s Best Breakout Players Over the Past 20 Years?
Here are the top 30 best breakout NBA seasons.
Each players breakout season is worth its own story, but I am going to just touch on a few that are not as well known as the prominent examples.
According to my measurement, Boris Diaw had the greatest breakout season. This was especially surprising because I had never heard him mentioned when talking about breakout seasons. That may be because I was under 10 years old during the 2005–06 NBA season, but more likely because his breakout season is incredibly underrated. It happened in Diaw’s third NBA season when he was 23 years old, and he increased his PER from 10 to 17.3. Here is his box score per game statistics from his breakout season and the year prior.
Absolutely outstanding improvements by all accounts which earned Diaw the Most Improved Player Award in 2006.
Another intriguing breakout season was Tracy McGrady’s 2002–03 NBA season, where he improved his PER from 25.1 to 30.3. McGrady was in his sixth NBA season and 23 years old. The reason the breakout season was so incredible was that McGrady already became a superstar two years prior when he was traded to the Orlando Magic, experienced a 4.9 increase in PER, and won the Most Improved Player Award. McGrady went from All-Star to Supernova during his 2003 breakout season. He placed fourth in the MVP race, made the All-NBA First Team, and according to my projections in a previous article, it was the 17th best NBA season ever.
What Causes a Player to Have a Breakout Season?
An old saying in sports is, “He needs a change of scenery.” After doing some research, this saying has a considerable amount of merit when it comes to breakout seasons. For players whose PER increased by four or higher, 44% were on a new team the season of, or the season before their breakout season. For players who saw a PER increase of five or higher, 52% were on a new team the season of, or the season before their breakout season. Boris Diaw, Montrezl Harrell, Victor Oladipo, Trey Lyles and Brandon Ingram are some examples of players traded the off-season before their breakout. Even Chris Paul’s breakout season happened after the New Orleans Hornets returned home following their two seasons in Oklahoma City due to Hurricane Katrina. There appears to be a significant correlation between changing teams and having a breakout season. I don’t think that switching teams causes a breakout season, but it can very possibly help trigger one.
A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the new team is a “good team,” and winning can really help fix any problem. Players who increased their PER by four or higher in their breakout season had an average team win percentage of 54%. For players who raised their PER by five or greater had an average team win percentage of 58%. For the same groups of players, their average increase in team win percentage from the year prior to their breakout season was 5% and 10%, respectively. The obvious flaw with this argument is that if a team had a player who experienced a massive increase in performance unexpectedly, of course the team experienced an improved win percentage. However, playing on a winning team can be another contributing factor to a breakout season.
Can You Predict who is Going to be a Breakout Player?
Although extremely hard to predict, breakout seasons are not entirely random. For players who experienced a PER increase of 4 or higher, their average age was 24, 52% were drafted as lottery picks, and 25% of them were centers which was the most out of any position. There is an element of the player being highly touted and developing later than expected when it comes to breakout seasons.
The teams that experienced the most breakout players over the past 20 years were the Toronto Raptors and Indiana Pacers. Indiana seemed slightly surprising, but when I looked into it, they experienced breakout years from notable players including, Victor Oladipo, Danny Granger, Domantas and Paul George. The teams tied for the second most breakout players were Milwaukee, Golden State, Boston, and Phoenix. All of these teams are well run organizations (except for Phoenix), so on top of changing teams, likely the organization plays a part in having a breakout season.
Another hypothesis I had was that during the season before a player’s breakout, the player could be trending upwards in the later months. It turns out this is likely not the case; for the most part, breakout seasons are unexpected. For all players who experienced a PER increase of five or higher, on average, experienced virtually no change in performance from before the All-Star break vs. after, in the season before their breakout. I then looked at players who experienced a PER increase of five or greater who did NOT switch teams before their breakout season. Theoretically, if the player’s situation stayed the same, they should have shown some signs of improvement in the prior season. For example, Antetokounmpo saw significant improvement before vs. after the All-Star break the season before his breakout.
(Per 36 minute statistics)
However, again on the whole, the player’s statistics increased a trivial amount. The only non-trivial statistical increase was their usage percentage, which increased by an average of 1.1% before vs after the All-Star break.
So Which NBA Player is Going to Have the Next Breakout Season?
Robert Williams of the Boston Celtics deserves an honourable mention. He is entering his third year at age 23, and the Celtics are thin at the center position which could give Williams an opportunity to shine in his third season.
If I had to pick only one player to have a breakout season next year, I like Harry Giles chances. Giles will be entering his third season next year at 23 years old. He was drafted 20th overall by the Sacramento Kings in the 2017 NBA draft, and the Kings declined his 2020–21 season option, so he will likely be joining a new team next season. Giles played most of his minutes at center, and the Kings have been a sub .500 team over his two seasons. If all the stars align for Giles, he could be in store for a significant improvement next season.
