Why median
The average is pulled by outliers. One Wilt Chamberlain season drags the number somewhere no real player lives. The mean is just the average by another name.
The median splits the roster in half. The player right in the middle. Not dragged by the extremes, not inflated by a handful of superstars, not deflated by ten-day contract players who barely saw the court. The median is the player who stands at the exact centre of the league, with half the players above and half below.
He is the most honest statistical portrait of what an NBA player actually looks like in any given season.
The Composite, Decade by Decade
Below is the median player at six points in NBA history, starting from the introduction of the three-point line in 1979. Every number represents the midpoint across all players who logged at least 20 games that season.
| Era | PPG | RPG | APG | MPG | Height | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969-70 | 10.8 | 5.2 | 2.0 | 27.0 | 6'5" | 200 |
| 1979-80 | 9.8 | 4.3 | 2.3 | 25.2 | 6'6" | 207 |
| 1989-90 | 9.5 | 4.0 | 2.2 | 24.6 | 6'6" | 215 |
| 1999-00 | 9.0 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 23.5 | 6'7" | 220 |
| 2009-10 | 9.3 | 3.8 | 2.1 | 23.0 | 6'6" | 222 |
| 2019-20 | 10.0 | 3.9 | 2.4 | 23.0 | 6'5" | 215 |
| 2024-25 | 10.5 | 4.2 | 2.8 | 23.5 | 6'5" | 215 |
1979-80
The three-point line arrives. The median player — someone like Dudley Bradley in Indiana — barely notices. He attempts one every three games. The game is still played inside the arc, with bruising post-ups and mid-range pull-ups defining the scoring landscape. He scores 9.8 points a night.
1989-90
The Bad Boys era. Physical defence is the norm, and scoring drops. A player like Blue Edwards in Utah is your median — 6'6", 215 pounds, 9.5 PPG. He picks up a three-pointer here and there, but the game lives in the paint.
1999-00
Peak isolation basketball. The median player is the heaviest he will ever be — 220 pounds. Brent Barry in Seattle embodies the type: post-up, pick-and-roll, contested mid-range. Scoring dips to 9.0 PPG. Three-point shooting is still a specialist's tool.
2009-10
The analytics revolution is just beginning. Brandon Bass in Dallas — the original inspiration for the "Most Average Player" award — is your median. He starts to slim down, his three-point attempts are climbing. Load management is becoming protocol.
2019-20
Positionless basketball is here. Terrence Ross in Orlando is the new median — 10.0 PPG on three threes a game. He is lighter, quicker, and more versatile than any previous version of the median player. The bubble compresses the schedule but doesn't change the trend.
2024-25
The current median player looks like Herb Jones in New Orleans: 6'5", 215 pounds, 10.5 PPG on four three-point attempts per game. Every player is a passer. Every player can shoot. The median has evolved into the ultimate tweener — and the game is built for him.
Points: A Flat Line With a Twist
The median player has scored between 8 and 11 points per game since 1970 — a tight band that masks a fascinating U-curve. Scoring dipped from nearly 11 PPG in the high-pace seventies to under 9 in the grind-it-out late nineties, then climbed back above 10 as pace surged in the 2020s. What changed most is where the shots come from. In 1980, the median player attempted roughly one three-pointer every three games. By 2025, he takes four a night. The geometry of the court is completely different.
Minutes: Doing Less, Together
The median player's minutes per game have dropped steadily since the 1970s — from 27 in 1970 to under 24 in 2025. This is roster depth at work. Teams carry 15 players. Coaches use 10 or 11. Load management went from a punchline to protocol. Not because the median player is lazier, but because somebody else is getting his minutes in the fourth quarter of a blowout.
Size: The Era of the Tweener
Height peaked in the late 90s and early 2000s, when the league was stacking rosters with seven-footers who clogged the paint. The median player was 6'7" and 220 pounds in 2000 — the heaviest he would ever be. By 2025, he is 6'5" and 215. The positionless basketball movement shaved two inches and five pounds off the composite. Centres who cannot switch on guards do not last. Guards who cannot rebound do not start. The median player today is the ultimate tweener: too big for traditional guard play, too small for traditional post play, and exactly right for the modern game.
Assists: The Passing Renaissance
The median player's assists have crept up over the last decade, hitting 2.8 per game in the current season. This is not because everyone became Magic Johnson. It is because offences now require every player to be a willing passer. The swing-swing-shoot motion offence generates assists from positions that used to just catch and hold. When a centre kicks out to a wing who swings to the corner, that is an assist from a player who in 1990 would have just posted up.
So Who Is the Median Player?
He is 6'5". He weighs 214 pounds. He plays 24.8 minutes a night, scores 12.4 points on a mix of mid-range pull-ups and corner threes, grabs 4.6 rebounds, and dishes 3.2 assists. He is what the NBA looks like when you strip away the stars and the deep bench. He is the most honest version of a professional basketball player alive today.
He is not average. He is not mean. He is the median. And he has been quietly evolving for 45 years.
Sources
- Player statistics: Basketball Reference (per-game stats, 1970-2025)
- Modern stats: NBA.com/stats (1996-2025 seasons)
- Median calculation: Across all players with ≥20 games played per season, median taken per stat (PPG, RPG, APG, MPG, 3PG)
- Player identification: Closest player to multi-stat median by Euclidean distance
