Walker's 3's

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

I've been thinking about Walker's three-point shooting after going to see
the Wizards game thanks to the generosity of Josh Ozersky. I was surprised
to see that Walker had put up 10 three-point attempts that game --
partially because of the blowout status of the game, but also because they
are more or less a planned part of the offense. It seemed that before,
Walker would rely on the 3 out of frustration almost, because he couldn't
get an easy shot, and it almost always ended up being a bad shot -- he'd be
overeager, wouldn't set his feet, would take it even if he was closely
covered. They stuck out like a sore thumb. And that was reflected in his
generally poor percentages. Even though he is shooting many more 3's
nowadays, the number of bad shots has decreased, at least proportionately,
and that's reflected in his high shooting percentage.

There have been numerous citations of the stat that he is only 46th in the
league in 3-pt percentage but 1st in attempts, presented as evidence that
he shouldn't be taking that many 3's. I think this is a misleading argument
at best. A similar argument is that Iverson leads the league in scoring but
is significantly below average in FG%, and should therefore not shoot so
much. The reason that Iverson has to shoot so much is because his team
absolutely needs him to; he provides so much of their offense. It's true
that he could shoot a better percentage if he shot less, but his team would
lose more. Now, on the current Celtics team, Pierce and Walker have to
score about 50 ppg for the Celtics to be an OK team, because they really
don't have a great deal of offensive talent surrounding them. I think that
Pierce is scoring about as much as he can realistically. And for Walker to
be a 25 ppg player with any effectiveness, he's got to put up a lot of 3's.

And 46th in the league isn't so bad, especially given his volume. For
instance, Allan Houston's shooting 38% from three-point range. I bet the
Knicks would love to be able to increase the number of 3 point looks that
Houston got. But Houston has to fight for every single one he gets. Walker
can get these looks easy, at just about the same percentage, because he's a
PF. And on this team, getting 37% opportunities on 3's is a great asset on
offense, even with all the hidden drawbacks. The alternatives aren't that
appetizing.

Anyway, the arguments that we'll never be a great team with our power
forward shooting 10 threes per game is still probably accurate, because
this type of behavior reflects the type of offensive talent we have. Unless
we manage to surround Walker and Pierce with much better defenders (similar
to Philly), I can't see this sort of offense going deep into the playoffs.
But for right now, with the team we have, I can't really fault the general
approach. The team's been winning more since Antoine got "out of control"
and I don't think it's a coincidence.

Alex