Versatility Index

Dusting off one of John Hollinger's old metrics.

In two recent posts I’ve focused on Kevin Garnett, and each time I brought up his incredible versatility. That reminded me of a metric John Hollinger introduced in the early 2000s which he coined the Versatility Index (VI). The VI is simply the geometric mean of three statistics: points per game (PPG), rebounds per game (RPG), and assists per game (APG):

VI = (PPG * RPG * APG)^(1/3)

The rest of this post will mostly be a data dump looking at some different iterations of this measure, with some occasional commentary sprinkled in.

Let’s start with last season’s leaders (minimum 70% of team’s games played):

• 14.2 — Nikola Jokic

• 13.1 — Luka Doncic

• 12.8 — Giannis Antetokounmpo

• 12.0 — Domantas Sabonis

• 11.2 — Joel Embiid

Nikola Jokic is the clear leader in this category, which should not come as a surprise given he averaged 24.5 PPG, 11.8 RPG, and 9.8 APG. Jokic led the NBA with 29 triple-doubles last season, more than doubling the total of the next-closest player (Domantas Sabonis, 14).