Gravity refers to the degree to which a player's presence on the court draws defensive attention, creating opportunities for teammates. A player with high gravity forces multiple defenders to account for their threat even when they don't have the ball, creating open looks and driving lanes for others. Stephen Curry is the canonical example of extreme gravity — his presence off the ball changes the entire defensive structure of the opposing team.
Gravity is a real and substantial contribution to winning basketball. The Curry pick-and-roll example is illustrative: when two defenders follow Curry off ball, the resulting open shot for a teammate is created by Curry's gravity — but the assist goes to the passing player, and Curry receives nothing in the box score.
Gravity has no standardized public metric. Tracking-based attempts are behind NBA.com's paid API. Box score metrics fundamentally cannot capture it — it is by definition a contribution that produces no countable event for the gravity player. RAPM-family metrics partially capture gravity through team outcome attribution (if the team scores more when Curry is on the floor, that appears in EPM and LEBRON), but cannot isolate the gravity component from the player's direct contributions.
Gravity is not currently scored in APEX because no public metric reliably quantifies it. However, it is explicitly documented as Known Limitation 2c. APEX's RAPM-family Impact pillar (EPM, LEBRON, DARKO DPM) partially captures gravity through team outcome effects. APEX's box score Scoring and Playmaking pillar metrics do not — they systematically undervalue off-ball gravity threats and overvalue high-usage ball-dominant players relative to their true two-way impact. Tracking-based gravity metrics are a V2 Roadmap Tier 3 candidate pending API access.