Re: Poor shooting

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 07:03 AM 11/12/2001, Steve and Michelle Ouellette wrote:

>All I ask is for my power forward to make 45 percent of his shots ... is
>that too much?
>
>STEVE O

Care to hazard a guess at what Antoine's career 2-pt FG% is?

It was 44.5% the last time I checked.

This is the problem with lumping all FGs together when some of them count 
for 3 points and some of them count for 2. How you combine them 
intelligently is an open issue, but it's simple enough to look at them 
separately. I mean, we don't just lump FGs with FTs and pretend they're the 
same, for obvious reasons. So Antoine is a career 44.5% 2-pt shooter and a 
career 33.3% 3-pt shooter.

So if you are comparing him to a traditional PF and you want him to shoot 
45%, well, he just about does that. You can decide for yourself as a 
separate issue whether the 33% 3-pt FG is a good thing or not, although it 
does seem like this is something he's improved over recent years (as 
opposed to his 2-pt FGs which haven't really improved).

The other things to consider are his turnovers and the frequency that he 
goes to the FT line. My feeling is that these are generally related to his 
2-pt FG attempts - that is, he turns the ball over (getting it stolen or 
committing offensive fouls) primarily on his drives into traffic, and he 
doesn't draw shooting fouls when jacking up 3's.

I always hear about how Antoine is not in the top 50 in 3-pt FG% as if this 
is some particularly meaningful benchmark. I remember he was something like 
#52, and if he shot a half percent higher he'd have been in the top 50. I 
guess at that point, it would have been, "I can't believe Antoine shoots so 
many 3's if he's not in the top 40!" and so on. The thing is that in 
relative terms (not using some formula like 33% 3's = 50% 2's, which I 
don't believe) compared to league averages, Antoine is probably a 
significantly better 3pt shooter than 2pt shooter. And also, you never hear 
that "Allen Iverson shouldn't take so many shots because he's not in the 
top 50 in 2-pt shots" because Philly started winning much more when Iverson 
started scoring 30 ppg.

Anyway, just some things to think about... I'm not trying to actually make 
any detailed arguments, just suggesting that we use some more care when 
throwing out FG% numbers and regurgitate Peter May complaints about "top 50 
3-pt shooters."

Alex