Your box score came from film, not a scorebook

Most teams below a certain level keep no book at all. There is no scorer at the table, no official line, and at the end of the season nobody can tell a player what they averaged.

Counting stats from film fills that gap, and it is worth understanding what kind of object it produces, because it is not the same as a book.

What the difference is

An official book is kept by a person who sees every possession and knows every player by name. Reel is watching the same footage you are, from the same angle, with the same obstructions. Every stat screen is labelled estimated from film for that reason.

That means the right question is not whether the numbers are perfect. It is how much of the game the footage actually showed, which is a question that can be answered.

Read the coverage meter first

When the scoreboard is readable, the real final score is taken from it and compared against the points counted play by play. That comparison is the coverage meter, and it is the most useful number on the page.

• High coverage means most scoring was visible and attributed, so individual lines are reasonably solid.
• Low coverage means a chunk of the game happened off camera, so treat per-player totals as a floor rather than a count.

If the scoreboard was never visible, the score is marked as not visible instead of guessed.

Where the numbers drift

Jersey misreads are the main one. A 6 read as an 8 moves a basket to a teammate, and filling in your roster helps a lot, because numbers get checked against players who actually exist on your team.

Assists are judgement calls even for humans, so expect them to be the loosest column. Rebounds in a crowd are often unresolvable from one angle.

What it is good for

Season totals beat any single game, because individual misreads wash out over six or eight games. A trend in your season line is more trustworthy than one box score.

And it is the only box score most players will ever have. An estimate you can check beats nothing to look at.

If a line looks wrong, it probably is, and it is usually a jersey. Open the game, check the number against your roster, and the season totals correct themselves.