You think LA and Derozen should shoot morec3s?
I told y'all muh'fukkas that Pop's being left behind.....
- Thread starter Gil Scott-Heroin
- Start date
Rigby.
The #1 Rated Mixtape of all Time
DeRozan needs what ever coaches Kawhi hit up while he was there. Idk why he doesn’t take it upon himself to become a real 3 pt shooter, especially since he basically been the same player (with a worse team) for 3-4 years now
2019/20: 0.2 three-point attempts per game (Spurs)
2018/19: 0.6 three-point attempts per game (Spurs)
2018/17: 3.6 three-point attempts per game (Raptors)
The Raptors actually had him take threes during his last season, and then the Spurs (for whatever reason) just scaled that all the way back until his activity was basically non-existent; you see defenders leaving him wide open above the arc now, where they just give him that cushion and only push up once he crosses that line. They do it to LMA as well. Two fewer players opposition teams have to chase off the 3-pt line.
Teams only have to do half the defensive work against the Spurs v. virtually all the other teams in the league.
Why are you so afraid of the 3-pt shot?
Is the difference between a 21-fter and a 23-fter that scary?
Think you know more than a coach with 5 rings brehs
Oh look, my favourite straw man argument makes its 10000375th appearance.
And here's the funny thing with your post: you do realize that Phil Jackson (11x championship-winning coach) was driven out of the league because of the 3-pt shot, right, and even made himself look silly in the process:
He actually tweeted this when the Grizzlies were up 2-1 on the Warriors, when he and everyone jumped the gun thinking GS would lose that series. Little did he know that this 3-pt orientated team would then go on to make five straight Finals and win three titles.
Postseason -
Regular season -
Warriors, Rockets, Cavs, and Hawks all made it to the Conference Finals that season.
Take that for data.
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They need to breh...
I hope pop is in his mad scientist phase and sees what needs to be done
Aldridge will actually attempt 3s when he has a decent look but DeMar just flat out won't
And it's pissing Me off.
But I'd still rather have DeMar than LaMarcus(if I had to choose between 1)
And it's pissing Me off.
But I'd still rather have DeMar than LaMarcus(if I had to choose between 1)
Lakerman0834
Veteran
Taking DeMar instead of Siakam or Ingram set the franchise back
How Mapping Shots In The NBA Changed It Forever
Every year, NBA players take about 200,000 shots. Each season, 30 teams combine to play 1,230 games, and at the end of the regular season, you can bet the sum total of shots taken will be very close to 200,000. In the hands of a cartographer, a season’s worth of this shooting data is a veritable treasure trove of information. But here’s the thing: In the first decade of this century, there weren’t many cartographers working in the NBA league office or for analytics departments in any of the team front offices.
Back then, basketball analytics was still in its infancy; it was all about spreadsheets and linear regression, not spatial and visual reasoning. Still, whether the league knew it or not, by adding these little spatial references to their game data, basketball analytics was about to become a lot more than spreadsheets. Things like data visualization and spatial analyses were going to be very important.
Unfortunately, there weren’t many folks with those skills working in pro basketball, and even though countless analysts had access to all the data the league was collecting — including all of the shot data — nobody was applying a spatial treatment. Nobody was mapping the NBA.
[Related: Kirk Goldsberry joins Hot Takedown to discuss his new book.]
When I first got my hands on these massive haystacks of shooting data, I was teaching cartography at Harvard. I’d found a way to retrieve five seasons’ worth of shooting data from the web, and I built a database that included over 1 million NBA field-goal attempts, who shot them and where they shot them from. As an analyst, I knew there was amazing intelligence waiting to be revealed within the database. As a mapmaker, I was confident I could visualize some of it in cool new ways. And as a huge NBA fan, I couldn’t wait to see the results.
Although I was desperate to chart out the shooting abilities of players like Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki, the first thing I wanted to see was the basic shooting patterns of the entire league. When you plot an entire season’s worth of shot data, some interesting patterns quickly emerge:
The graphic is more than just a shytload of dots. This basic plot shows us where on the floor the most important concentrations of field-goal attempts occurred in 2014-15. We can see that there was a major hub of shooting activity near the basket and another band of activity out beyond the 3-point arc. We can also see that the league’s shooters were generally less active in the 2-point jump-shooting areas between the arc and the paint, but this plot says nothing about the relative values or successes of shots in different areas.
Each one of these dots has a backstory. Each one has a shooter attached, a team attached and an outcome attached. We know who took each shot and whether it went in or not. And we can smooth out these dots statistically and map out the overall field-goal percentage of the NBA as a collective.
Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we can see that the probability of a shot going through the net greatly depends on where that shot came from. This insight is not surprising on its own, but it does reveal specifics about the basic relationships between distance, direction and field-goal percentage. What did surprise me when I first studied this chart was learning that outside of 6 feet, there is no place on the court where shooters make more than 45 percent of their shots. I’d always thought that 50 percent was the magic field-goal percentage threshold, but this graphic shows that the only place on the floor where players exceed that magic number is the tiny swath of space just in front of the basket.
The next thing I noticed was even more surprising. When you look at leaguewide shooting numbers between 6 and 25 feet, the league is strangely consistent. I expected to see a marked decrease in field-goal percentage with greater distance: I thought shorter jump shots would go in at higher rates than longer jump shots. While this is true, the effect is much more subtle than I would have expected.
As it turns out, NBA players make only 40 percent of their shots between 8 and 9 feet from the rim, and that number drops to only 35 percent between 25 and 26 feet from the rim. When it comes to field-goal percentage on jump shots, the effect of shot distance is pretty minor. It was a revelation, and it drove me to quickly build the following map, which would forever change the way I viewed scoring in the NBA.
Field-goal percentage is only part of the story, and in a league with a 3-point line, it is a very misleading part of the story. After all, points are the ultimate currency in the NBA.
When we visualize the average points per shot according to shot location, only then does the true economic landscape of the contemporary NBA reveal itself. Only then does Daryl Morey’s economic vision become clear. Only then do we see the massive economic subsidy represented by the 3-point line. And when we compare the points-per-shot map with the field-goal percentage map, we are left with a troubling thought about the contemporary geography of NBA basketball.
If it’s true that 3-point shots go in 36 percent of the time and 10-foot shots go in just 40 percent of the time, then why are we assigning 50 percent more value to shots from beyond that magical little arc?
The natural landscape depicted in the field-goal percentage map demonstrates that jump shooting in the NBA is essentially a 35 to 45 percent proposition; however, some of those shots are worth 3 and some are worth 2. Naturally, as basic economics would predict, the behavior of players and teams has reacted in the form of shot selection. When we overlay the most common 200 shot locations in today’s NBA, we see that shot selection and economic efficiency are aligned.
No wonder 2-point jump shooting is dying.
Every year, NBA players take about 200,000 shots. Each season, 30 teams combine to play 1,230 games, and at the end of the regular season, you can bet the sum total of shots taken will be very close to 200,000. In the hands of a cartographer, a season’s worth of this shooting data is a veritable treasure trove of information. But here’s the thing: In the first decade of this century, there weren’t many cartographers working in the NBA league office or for analytics departments in any of the team front offices.
Back then, basketball analytics was still in its infancy; it was all about spreadsheets and linear regression, not spatial and visual reasoning. Still, whether the league knew it or not, by adding these little spatial references to their game data, basketball analytics was about to become a lot more than spreadsheets. Things like data visualization and spatial analyses were going to be very important.
Unfortunately, there weren’t many folks with those skills working in pro basketball, and even though countless analysts had access to all the data the league was collecting — including all of the shot data — nobody was applying a spatial treatment. Nobody was mapping the NBA.
[Related: Kirk Goldsberry joins Hot Takedown to discuss his new book.]
When I first got my hands on these massive haystacks of shooting data, I was teaching cartography at Harvard. I’d found a way to retrieve five seasons’ worth of shooting data from the web, and I built a database that included over 1 million NBA field-goal attempts, who shot them and where they shot them from. As an analyst, I knew there was amazing intelligence waiting to be revealed within the database. As a mapmaker, I was confident I could visualize some of it in cool new ways. And as a huge NBA fan, I couldn’t wait to see the results.
Although I was desperate to chart out the shooting abilities of players like Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki, the first thing I wanted to see was the basic shooting patterns of the entire league. When you plot an entire season’s worth of shot data, some interesting patterns quickly emerge:
The graphic is more than just a shytload of dots. This basic plot shows us where on the floor the most important concentrations of field-goal attempts occurred in 2014-15. We can see that there was a major hub of shooting activity near the basket and another band of activity out beyond the 3-point arc. We can also see that the league’s shooters were generally less active in the 2-point jump-shooting areas between the arc and the paint, but this plot says nothing about the relative values or successes of shots in different areas.
Each one of these dots has a backstory. Each one has a shooter attached, a team attached and an outcome attached. We know who took each shot and whether it went in or not. And we can smooth out these dots statistically and map out the overall field-goal percentage of the NBA as a collective.
Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we can see that the probability of a shot going through the net greatly depends on where that shot came from. This insight is not surprising on its own, but it does reveal specifics about the basic relationships between distance, direction and field-goal percentage. What did surprise me when I first studied this chart was learning that outside of 6 feet, there is no place on the court where shooters make more than 45 percent of their shots. I’d always thought that 50 percent was the magic field-goal percentage threshold, but this graphic shows that the only place on the floor where players exceed that magic number is the tiny swath of space just in front of the basket.
The next thing I noticed was even more surprising. When you look at leaguewide shooting numbers between 6 and 25 feet, the league is strangely consistent. I expected to see a marked decrease in field-goal percentage with greater distance: I thought shorter jump shots would go in at higher rates than longer jump shots. While this is true, the effect is much more subtle than I would have expected.
As it turns out, NBA players make only 40 percent of their shots between 8 and 9 feet from the rim, and that number drops to only 35 percent between 25 and 26 feet from the rim. When it comes to field-goal percentage on jump shots, the effect of shot distance is pretty minor. It was a revelation, and it drove me to quickly build the following map, which would forever change the way I viewed scoring in the NBA.
Field-goal percentage is only part of the story, and in a league with a 3-point line, it is a very misleading part of the story. After all, points are the ultimate currency in the NBA.
When we visualize the average points per shot according to shot location, only then does the true economic landscape of the contemporary NBA reveal itself. Only then does Daryl Morey’s economic vision become clear. Only then do we see the massive economic subsidy represented by the 3-point line. And when we compare the points-per-shot map with the field-goal percentage map, we are left with a troubling thought about the contemporary geography of NBA basketball.
If it’s true that 3-point shots go in 36 percent of the time and 10-foot shots go in just 40 percent of the time, then why are we assigning 50 percent more value to shots from beyond that magical little arc?
The natural landscape depicted in the field-goal percentage map demonstrates that jump shooting in the NBA is essentially a 35 to 45 percent proposition; however, some of those shots are worth 3 and some are worth 2. Naturally, as basic economics would predict, the behavior of players and teams has reacted in the form of shot selection. When we overlay the most common 200 shot locations in today’s NBA, we see that shot selection and economic efficiency are aligned.
No wonder 2-point jump shooting is dying.
They can’t shoot them well
It depends on what you mean by "well".
In the context of the best marksmen in the league, they can't, but that's only because they don't take enough reps; they'd be up near the top if they had been regularly shaping their skillset around them and putting them into practice. If the 3-pt line didn't exist, you do realize that DeRozan and LMA would be seen as two of the best shooters in the league, right?
It's not like they don't have a jumpshot - they've been living in the midrange for years - it's not like asking Dwight Howard to start shooting 3s.
Look at Blake Griffin:
2018/19 - 7 three-point attempts at 36%
2018/17 - 5.6 three-point attempts at 35%
2017/16 - 1.9 three-points attempts at 33%
2016/15 - 0.5 three-point attempts / 9 midrange attempts at 38%
2015/14 - 0.4 three-point attempts / 7.7 midrange attempts at 40%
2014/13 - 0.6 three-point attempts / 5.8 midrange attempts at 37%
Now, do you see how he's upped his reps and improved his shot to where he's one of the best 3-pt shooting big men in the game, and is a considerably more efficient jumpshooter?
DeRozan and LMA are both naturally better shooters than he is, the only difference is that Blake moved with the times, and instead of taking shots in the midrange he expanded his range, which not only made him a more efficient scorer, but it's benefited all the offenses he's been in: spacing, shot generation, lineups/rotations etc ad nauseam.
DeRozan last season - 7.2 midrange attempts per game at 40% = 5.8 points
LMA last season - 7.1 midrange attempts per game at 45% = 6.4 points
Now in order for both of them to eclipse that efficiency they'd only need to shoot:
Derozan - 7.2 three-point attempts per game at 27% = 5.85 points
LMA - 7.1 three-point attempts per game at 30% = 6.45 points
DeRozan would only need to shoot 27% from 3, and LMA 30% from 3 to eclipse their efficiency from the midrange. There's no reason why both of them can't at the very least match Blake's 3-pt efficiency. And here's the thing, if they're both prioritizing the 3-pt shot, it's only going to open up shots in the midrange, when defenders chase them off the 3-pt line, and therefore, they can take easier shots in the midrange instead of now where they're taking tough, contested shots because defenders already know that's the only shot they're going to take.
I hope you read all this @CrimsonTider and don't just ignore it and go back to your bu-bu-but they can't shoot them well.
...would create tremendous space for an athletic teammate like Murray to exploit.
If we can get away from "GSH claims he knows more than Pop" and focus on the team benefits of better spacing, we could have a more fun and thoughtful discussion here.
This is the untapped potential the Spurs are sitting on.
Unfortunately, all the muh'fukkas that were running up in this thread won't be back to have a genuine discussion about this now.
And this is why this board ain't shyt.
Trojan 24
Veteran
Pops biggest mistake was not trading for BI and dem, he just doesn't have the right pieces for today's league