NBA Storylines: 10 players taking on bigger role

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Teams have played an average of 15 games through Wednesday, and some look much different than they did last season.
Players are also taking on new roles, whether they’re on a new team or the same one. Those new roles can result in big jumps (or drops) in usage rate and/or time of possession.
Biggest jump in usage rate, 2023-24 to ’24-25
TS% = PTS / (2 * (FGA + (0.44 * FTA)))
Minimum 250 minutes played last season and 100 minutes played this season (278 players)
Usage rate is the percentage of his team’s possessions that a player ends (via field goal attempts, turnovers and trips to the line) while he’s on the floor. The league leader through Wednesday is LaMelo Ball at 36.2%.
True shooting percentage measures scoring efficiency (Ty Jerome is the current leader among players with at least 75 field goal attempts), and can often go down when a player sees a jump in usage rate.
A couple of notes…
Here’s the other end of the list …
Biggest drop in usage rate, 2023-24 to ’24-25
Usage rate looks at the end of a possession, while time of possession (tracked by Second Spectrum) tells us how much a player has the ball in his hands.
Here are the players who’ve seen the biggest jumps in time of possession, as a percentage of the minutes that they’ve been on the floor …
Biggest jump in time of possession, 2023-24 to ’24-25
Per game = Time of possession per game
TOP% = Time of possession / total minutes on the floor
Minimum 250 minutes in 2023-24 and 100 minutes in 2024-25
via Second Spectrum tracking
Biggest drop in time of possession, 2023-24 to ’24-25
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X. 
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