Comments on: Who should be shooting more?

By: John W. Davis

John W. Davis — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:59:41 +0000

I think the team would need like 10-15 more shots by your calculations.

How can we do that?

I like what you were trying to do but we have to take away shots to get those extra shots.

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:51:40 +0000

This analysis indicates that just about every player needs more shots. There just aren’t that many shots to go around so the whole thing is kind of moot. Unless they play seven seconds or less type basketball.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 18 May 2009 00:26:10 +0000

Yeah, but you could have a scaled bin size. The problem with your current presentation is that there are just too few data points for your bins, especially charting against the Binary Variable W/L.

Also, there is no idication of Makes, let’s face it that’s what we want not FGA but FGM. Charting FGA vs FG% might be more meaningful, but again you don’t have a big sample.

By: Ignarus

Ignarus — Sun, 17 May 2009 09:39:01 +0000

neat to look at the numbers, but it’s hard to say much of anything without knowing if the player is shooting efficiently or just chucking it. with guys playing small roles especially, they can be getting shots because it’s garbage time and they won or because it’s garbage time and they lost.

interesting, but very, very complicated issue.

By: jankx

jankx — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:19:06 +0000

These numbers are misleading, some guys shots (Kwame Browns’) will be higher becuase the team was already had a big lead. Kwame shooting more will not help your team win.
There is so much more to basketball than statistics and no coaching decisions should be made on this data alone.

By: jason

jason — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:28:58 +0000

Basically what this tells us that when bench players shoot more, the Pistons have a higher winning%. Of course bench players don’t get green-lit unless Pistons have a lead, so that correlation makes sense.

It also says that when the top players (except Sheed)take shots that approach their average, the team tends to win more games. That Sheed is the anomaly also makes sense as he rarely plays consistently (sometimes passive, sometimes active), meaning you don’t get reliable results. Which is a result in itself.

What does this ultimately say about the Pistons? That none of their players are good enough to carry a team. When any individual dominates the ball, the team loses. When they share the ball and each player gets near to their average, the team wins. And if they win by alot, then Afflalo gets to shoot 6 times in the last couple minutes.

By: Dan Feldman

Dan Feldman — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:33:40 +0000

The problem with that is the cutoff points would be arbitrary. Shots that shouldn’t be grouped together could be, and vice versa.

By: Dan Feldman

Dan Feldman — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:31:06 +0000

Johnson shot outside far less than almost everyone else on the team. Twenty percent of his shots were jumpers. Twenty-one percent of Kwame Brown’s shots were jumpers. Jason Maxiell was next lowest at 39 percent.

So, to say Johnson made a high percentage of his outside shots is a bit misleading. He just didn’t take enough of them to make those numbers reliable.

By: Dan Feldman

Dan Feldman — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:02:32 +0000

You’re right. For many, players there isn’t a strong trend. But there was no way of telling which players have noticeable trends without charting everyone.

And the optimal number of shots is a bit subjective. I also included how the team did when a player shot just one or two off from what could be an optimal number.

By: snafu

snafu — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:14:29 +0000

Although these charts are interesting, you might be better off batching shot groups together to reduce the effect of small sample sizes that make the graphs go haywire. Maybe for each player have only 5 data points, so in Sheed’s case that would mean grouping 1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, and 17-19 shot attempts. Obviously it wouldn’t change much but it would make the graphs slightly more effective imo.