Tonight seems like a good time to remind that FTA correlates with winning better than FT%.

Tonight seems like a good time to remind that FTA correlates with winning better than FT%.

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Please stop doing it, Mark Jackson

4 months ago doubleteapot 5 comments 0 recs |

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Could not disagree more… Correlation is nothing more than two data sets trending in the same direction. There’s a lot more going on in the background of that statistic which shouldn’t be ignored. Teams who foul (not on purpose) are bad defensive teams. Thus those teams lose more. Hack-a-Dwight is a completely different matter and even decent (even good) defensive teams will use hack-a-dwight now and there, just you wait.

We had 1 center last night. He was in foul trouble (not as a result of hack-a-dwight). Udoh is a PF and is way undersized. He was probably 0/7 last night on 1 on 1’s defending Dwight. David Lee would have been riding the bench in foul trouble if we put him on Dwight the whole game, and we needed his offensive production. Given our big man situation last night, I think it was a genius plan to Hack-a-dwight. Frustrating that we didn’t use it between the 6 min – 2 min mark in the 4th quarter…

by Steph Curry's Nipples on Jan 13, 2012 10:17 AM PST reply actions

You're missing the point.

This isn’t an empty correlation.

The point is that with the exception of a few particularly terrible foul shooters, when you get FTA you are getting high-percentage shots. If you only hit 55% of your FTA for a trip to the charity stripe to be an above-average offensive possession.

And even if you don’t hit that number, you’re still getting your opponent’s best players off the floor, which helps you in other ways.

So compare two teams. One team has a player who hits 75% of his foul shots and goes to the line five times a game. The other hits 90% of his shots and goes to the line four times a game. Everything else between them is equal. Intuitively we feel like the second player is doing more to help his team (90% of his foul shots, he’s awesome at that!) than the first … but in reality the first player is doing more to help his team win. (Multiple it out and see the expected points).

by Ronaldinho on Jan 13, 2012 12:07 PM PST up reply actions