Re: Walker's FG%

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 11:20 PM 4/19/01 -0400, David J. Boutte wrote:
>Antoine finished the season shooting 41%. Most of us, myself 
>included, feel that this is too low. I believe we'd be happy with him 
>shooting 45 or 46%.
>
>What these numbers mean is that for every 100 shots taken, 
>Antoine is making 4 or 5 less than a 45 or 46% shooter. This 
>difference truly seems insignificant. However, 41% still seems too 
>low. What am I missing here?

A couple of things. First, you have to look at 2-pt FG% and 3-pt FG%
instead of overall FG% in his case. Antoine shot 43.9% on 2-pt FGs and
36.7% on 3-pt FGs, which means that he was a significantly better offensive
player than the 41% implies. On the other hand, he shot a very respectable
47.1% on 2-pt FGs last year so he's clearly slipped in that area, and he
also shot 100 fewer free throws. Some of this can likely be attributed to
his love for the 3-ball this year. I also think that being the primary
ballhandler probably lowered his percentages also; basically nobody was
creating any easy baskets for him.

Second, the difference does seem insignificant but actually, a few points
per game makes a big difference. Say that you have a player that shoots 20
times per game, but shoots 40% instead of 45%. On average, he's scoring 16
ppg instead of 18 ppg (ignore 3s and FTs). So with everything else the
same, your team is scoring 2 ppg less. Well, it doesn't seem like that
much, but if you look at the stats, the Celtics were outscored by their
opponents by 2.2 ppg; if they scored the same as their opponents, you'd
expect them to be a .500 team. This is basically what Indiana's stats
reflect -- they are outscored by 0.2 ppg and have 41 wins. So 2 ppg is
roughly the difference between our 36 win team and a 41 win playoff team --
not huge but definitely significant.

Anyway, on a side note, I guess this is what is frustrating about Antoine.
If you take the best parts out of different seasons, you have a monster
player who averages 47% from 2 pt range, 37% from 3pt range, 23+ ppg, 10
rpg, 5.5 apg. Of course there are problems with this composite: you're not
going to get tons of offensive rebounds while jacking up tons of 3s and
passing from the perimeter. Even so, there is basically no one in the
league who has composite career highs like that. But it seems like every
season he improves in some areas and regresses in others. I could imagine
him averaging 25-10-5 and shooting good percentages with a decent point
guard to take some of the playmaking role and create some easy baskets for
him, based solely on his past performances, if only he could put it all
together in one season. 

Alex