The Answer: Fewer Dumb Shots

82games.com has done some very cool stat tracking in recent years. One of the stat breakdowns within shooting stats is a breakdown of shooting by shot clock situation. This is useful for a variety of reasons.

First off, one can compare teams and learn about their tendencies. For example, the open court, Mike D’Antoni led Knicks take 37 percent of their shots during the first ten seconds of the shot clock. The Pistons, in contrast, take only 33 percent of their shots during the first ten seconds of the shot clock. Based on effective field goal percentage* (eFG%), the Knicks have been much more successful than the Pistons on those early shots. On the other hand, the Pistons have been more efficient with their half court offense. The results are evident in the stats, which show that the Pistons have a higher eFG% in the later part of the shot clock.

The other benefit of the stat breakdown is that it conveys information about individual players. A player like Tayshaun Prince may appear to be a poor shooter based on a sub-par eFG%, but when one digs a little deeper, a different story is told. Prince takes 28% of his shots during the last four seconds of the shot clock – an incredibly high amount – and converts those shots at a 43.2 eFG%. What this means is that Prince is often called upon to bail the Pistons out at the end of the shot clock and he does a very good job of doing just that. It also shows how Prince can be one of the best offensive players on the Pistons despite a middling effective field goal percentage.

On the other end of the spectrum is Allen Iverson. The shot clock usage shooting breakdowns for the Pistons and for Allen Iverson are below.




What this shows is that Iverson is taking a high percentage of his shots – 36 percent – early in the shot clock. However, Iverson has been horribly inefficient with those shots. Typically, players only take shots in the early part of the shot clock if they have a layup, dunk, or wide open look. As a result, most players have an early shot clock eFG% in the fifties, if not higher. Amir Johnson, for example, has made 69.4 percent of the shots he has taken in the first ten seconds of the shot clock. Excluding Iverson, the Pistons have roughly a 56 eFG% on shots early in the shot clock.

Iverson’s mark of 40.6% is simply unacceptable. He is clearly taking far too many difficult shots early in the shot clock. This is not a fluke based upon a small sample size either; Iverson has taken well over 200 shots early in the shot clock. He needed to make about 40 more of those in order to post an eFG% on par with the rest of his team.

In the first ten seconds of the shot clock, a player still has time to kick the ball out to a point guard and run a play. Through a play, the Pistons are almost certainly capable of creating a far better shot than one that yields only a 40.6 eFG%. The fact that Iverson has opted to take such a high quantity of low percentage shots implies selfish play.

The usually astute Kelly Dwyer noted on Monday that the Pistons are struggling this season:

And Detroit, whatever it is, they just don't have it. This team continues to lose, even when it plays well, even when the whole team is interested.
…
You can't blame this on Allen Iverson. Don't even start. Detroit's issues run far deeper than that.

He argues that all of the Pistons problems cannot be pinned on Iverson. Maybe so, but it surely does not help that the team’s highest paid player and supposed offensive whiz is killing the team with horrendous decision making and ineffective shooting.

*Effective Field Goal Percentage equals (FG+0.5*3P)/FGA. The statistic adjusts field goal percentage to account for the additional value of a made three pointer.
(Thanks to 82games.com and Basketball-Reference.com for stats, tables, and formulas)