Mike Conley, Nicolas Batum and the NBA's bounceback players of the year

Success in sports can come in waves and it flows up and down like a pendulum. One minute you’re soaring up and the next you’re down bad.

But when athletes are struggling, the great ones always find ways to get back on their feet. This past season, after a disappointing first campaign with Utah, veteran guard Mike Conley returned to form for the Jazz. Thaddeus Young gave the Chicago Bulls what they wanted when they originally signed him. Nicolas Batum came back to life once he joined the Clippers.

It can be a variety of reasons, whether it’s a new environment or a coaching change or different teammates, success on the court tends to ebb and flow.

For this exercise, we also used some visual aids from dunksandthrees.com. who charted each player’s estimated plus-minus (EPM) through their careers. This is a catch-all statistic that aims to provide the best all-in-one metric for net player impact per 100 possessions.

Other factors were included for this list as well, of course, but this helped contextualize our work with a visual reference.