Key takeaways
- Read shooting as made-attempted pairs (9-17, 3-7, 4-5) before looking at any percentage, because the attempts tell you how big the sample is.
- Work out two-point shooting yourself by subtracting the three-point columns from the field-goal columns.
- Use true shooting or effective field-goal percentage to compare scorers, because both give a three its extra value.
- Treat a single game's plus-minus as a lineup result, not a personal score, since it counts every point scored while the player was on the floor.
- Remember what the box score leaves out: most defence, screens and the context of pace and role.
A basketball box score lists every player who played, with one row each and one column per statistic: minutes, shots made and attempted, free throws, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, fouls, plus-minus and points. Read each row from left to right as a story of one player's game: how long they played, how they scored, what else they did, and what happened to the score while they were out there.
The fastest way to learn the columns is to read one line slowly. The line below is invented for illustration; it does not describe any real player or game. The definitions come from NBA.com's stats glossary, the league's own reference.
One line, read slowly
| MIN | FGM-FGA | 3PM-3PA | FTM-FTA | OREB | DREB | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TOV | PF | +/- | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 34 | 9-17 | 3-7 | 4-5 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | +6 | 25 |
Minutes
MIN is minutes played. It is the first number to read because it is the denominator for everything else: 25 points in 34 minutes is a different performance from 25 points in 44.
Shooting
FGM-FGA is field goals made and attempted. The glossary is explicit that each "includes both 2 pointers and 3 pointers", so the 9-17 above contains the three-pointers too. 3PM-3PA is three-point field goals made and attempted, and FTM-FTA is free throws made and attempted.
Box scores show percentages, but the pairs matter more. The attempts tell you how much to trust the percentage: 3-7 from three is 42.9%, but on seven shots a single make either way would have moved it by more than ten points.
Rebounds
OREB counts rebounds collected while on offence, DREB rebounds collected while on defence, and REB the total. Offensive rebounds are the rarer kind: in 2025-26 they were about a quarter of all rebounds, 11.4 of 43.8 per team-game in Basketball-Reference's league averages. The glossary adds a nuance: "an Offensive Rebound does not create another possession, it simply makes the existing possession longer."
Playmaking and mistakes
AST counts "passes that lead directly to a made basket". TOV counts each time the player "on offense loses the ball to the defense". Assists divided by turnovers gives the assist-to-turnover ratio, here 7 ÷ 3 ≈ 2.3.
The defensive columns
STL counts steals, BLK blocked shots and PF personal fouls. These, plus defensive rebounds, are nearly all the defence a box score records.
Plus-minus and points
+/- is "the point differential when a player or team is on the floor". Here the team outscored its opponent by six during this player's 34 minutes. PTS is total points.
Checking the arithmetic
A box score is internally consistent, and checking it is the best way to learn it.
- Points equal 2 × two-point makes + 3 × three-point makes + free throws made. There were 9 field goals and 3 of them were threes, so 6 twos: 2 × 6 + 3 × 3 + 4 = 25.
- Rebounds equal offensive plus defensive: 2 + 6 = 8.
- Two-point shooting is not printed, but you can derive it: (9 - 3) makes from (17 - 7) attempts is 6 for 10, or 60%.
Three numbers worth calculating yourself
The printed field-goal percentage, 9 ÷ 17 = 52.9%, treats a three as no more valuable than a two. Three quick calculations fix that, using the formulas in NBA.com's glossary:
| Measure | Formula | This line | 2025-26 league average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Effective field-goal % (eFG%) | (FGM + 0.5 × 3PM) ÷ FGA | (9 + 1.5) ÷ 17 = 61.8% | 54.6% |
| True shooting % (TS%) | PTS ÷ [2 × (FGA + 0.44 × FTA)] | 25 ÷ [2 × 19.2] = 65.1% | 58.1% |
| Assist-to-turnover | AST ÷ TOV | 7 ÷ 3 = 2.3 | n/a |
The league averages come from Basketball-Reference's per-game table for 2025-26. By either shooting measure, this invented line is well above average. To run both shooting formulas on any line of your own, the true shooting percentage calculator shows TS% and eFG% side by side. True shooting is the more complete of the two, because it also counts what the player did at the free-throw line.
Double-doubles and triple-doubles
NBA.com's glossary defines a double-double as a "double-digit number total in two of the five categories in a game", and a triple-double as the same in three. The example line, with 25 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists, is neither. Two more rebounds would have made it a double-double.
The labels are thresholds, not quality judgements. A 10-point, 10-rebound game counts, while a 40-point game with 9 rebounds, 9 assists and single figures elsewhere does not. Read them as a description of a stat line's shape, not as a ranking.
Same stats, different labels
Basketball-Reference abbreviates several columns differently. The numbers mean the same; only the headings change.
| NBA.com | Basketball-Reference | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| FGM / FGA | FG / FGA | Field goals made / attempted, twos and threes together |
| 3PM / 3PA | 3P / 3PA | Three-point field goals made / attempted |
| FTM / FTA | FT / FTA | Free throws made / attempted |
| OREB / DREB / REB | ORB / DRB / TRB | Offensive, defensive and total rebounds |
| TOV | TOV | Turnovers |
| +/- | +/- | Points scored minus points allowed while on the floor |
Basketball-Reference's glossary also notes when each column begins in league records: three-pointers from 1979-80, steals, blocks and offensive rebounds from 1973-74, and turnovers from 1977-78. Older box scores are missing those columns because the league did not keep them.
Three things a box score cannot tell you
Most of defence. Steals, blocks, defensive rebounds and fouls are all it records. The author of Box Plus/Minus puts it bluntly: on defence "the box score is quite limited", while on offence it misses things like screen-setting. A defender who forces a bad shot without touching the ball leaves no trace.
Context. Totals depend on minutes, on the team's pace and on the player's role. Twenty-five points mean more on a slow team than a fast one. Basketball advanced stats explained shows how per-possession numbers correct for that.
Who caused the plus-minus. A single game's +/- counts every point scored while the player was on the floor, by all ten players. It is a lineup result first and a personal one a distant second; over many games it becomes more informative, but one night's number is noisy.
A 30-second reading routine
- Find the minutes, and set expectations by them.
- Read the shooting pairs and note the attempts before the percentages.
- Check free-throw attempts, which show how often a player got to the line.
- Look at assists against turnovers for anyone who handles the ball.
- Glance at rebounds by position: a guard's 8 rebounds and a centre's 8 are different nights.
- Read plus-minus last, and lightly.
Positions change what a good line looks like, which basketball positions explained covers.
Box scores in our games
In Basketball Career Sim, a fictional career game, the court view shows the score, player stats, momentum and positioning as each key possession resolves, so you watch your own line build up decision by decision. The basketball career sim guide explains why the relationship read-outs matter as much as that stat line. Pro Basketball GM Franchise works at team level instead, across a full 82-game season; the draft and GM guide explains how to read a season's results without over-reading them. Simulated numbers come from each game's own model; they are not real-world statistics or predictions. More guides are on the basketball hub, and the full list of titles is in the sports GM category.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
What does FGM-FGA mean in a basketball box score?
What is a double-double?
What does plus-minus mean in a box score?
How do you calculate assist-to-turnover ratio?
What can a box score not tell you?
Sources
- Stat Glossary (opens in a new tab)NBA.com — accessed
- Glossary (opens in a new tab)Basketball-Reference.com — accessed
- NBA League Averages - Per Game (opens in a new tab)Basketball-Reference.com — accessed
- About Box Plus/Minus (BPM) (opens in a new tab)Basketball-Reference.com — accessed
League, team and athlete names appear here only to identify the rules, records and history being discussed. Reign Creative LLC's sports games are not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by any league, team, players' association or athlete, and all names and marks belong to their owners.
About the author
Reign Creative LLC — The independent app studio that builds the apps covered on this site and publishes every article here. On Google Play it publishes as Reign Collective Apps.
We use AI tools to help research, draft and edit our articles. Each article lists the sources its factual claims rely on, and details about our apps come from their live Google Play listings. No article on this site has been reviewed by an independent expert unless the reviewer is named on it.
No person at Reign Creative LLC has read this article in full. It was published after automated checks and an AI editorial review, which are described in our editorial policy and are not the same as a person reading every sentence.
Spotted an error? Tell us — how corrections are handled is set out in our editorial policy.
