Re: Its the shot selection..sheesh.

[Kestutis.Kveraga@dartmouth.edu (Kestutis Kveraga)]

--- You wrote:
Your missing the point. Its not that Walker is shooting to much, its that he
is taking the wrong shots. I think he could shoot 45% if he had the shot
selection of Rodney Rodgers. Walker might have a high basketball IQ but
he PLAYS out of emotion lots of time. 
--- end of quote ---

True, he shot 47% on 2pt in '99-'00. I agree with the rest of this post, too. 

Spurred by this debate, I checked out some of Walker's career trends. It turns
out that his shots per game (spg) negatively correlates with his overall
shooting %, although we're only talking about a range of ~16-22 spg. Yet, if
you look at the correlations between spg and % for 2-pointers and 3-pointers
separately, they're both positive . 
The catch is that his ratio of 2FG-attempted to 3FG-attempted has shifted
dramatically to a higher and higher % of threes taken - from 88/12 in his first
season to his current split of 62/38, and that's with 4+ more shots taken per
game. Even though he's improved his 3-point shooting, 3-pointers' being such a
large proportion of his shots hurts his shooting %. Moreover, his current 12.9
2pt-attempted are probably too low. Based on his (limited) data, it seems that
his best spg range for 2-pointers is 15-17 spg, whereas he shoots threes about
as well when he takes 4 per game as when he takes 8. To summarize, if he upped
his 2-point attempts by 3-4, and shot fewer, but 'better', threes, his shooting
% might be better.  

This is only based on Toine's shooting % and and the assumption that the
unaccounted-for factors - and there are many - don't have a large influence on
his shots and shooting %. So, take it FWIW.

Kestas