stat regarding field goal attempts

by **beat** Sat Dec 05, 2009 12:50 pm

Just did as bit of looking at Field goal attempt in relation to team balance.
So here me out, probably what is to be expected, but here goes.

When in HS and college I ran cross country. As you might know low score wins. The top five runners are called the scorers and all you do is add their finish position to get the score. 15 is a perfect score as you would have finished in the top 5 positions. 1+2+3+4+5= 15.

Also important as to the finish is the time gap of your first 5 runners. The closer the gap the better, we would try to run as a pack and finish as close as possible.

So I thought it might be interesting to look at the better teams in the NBA and the top 5 players listed for field goal attempts and see what the total gap is. There were some suprises about how big the "gap" from the top thru to the 5th was.

Here are the results.
I realize they are somewhat skewed with injuries to players on some teams

Celtics
69 attempt gap from most attempts to the fifth most, and only 14 from 1 to 3.
PP 246
RA 243
KG 232
RR 189
RW 177

Cleveland
242 attempt gap from 1-5
James 357
Mo W 263
Z 135
A P 130
Shaq 115

Atlanta
182 attempt gap 1-5
JJ 352
Crawford 240
Josh S 228
Al H 185
M Williams 170

Orlando
135 attempt gap 1-5
V Carter 259
D Howard 178
Pietrus 135
Anderson 130
Nelson 126

Denver
248 attempt gap 1-5
Melo 399
Billups 214
Nen 174
Martin 172
Smith 151

Lakers
279 attempt gap 1-5
Kobe 401
Bynum 214
Ron A 187
Odom 143
Fisher 122

Suns
55 attempt gap 1-5 (28 from 1-3)
Amare 238
Nash 222
J Rich 210
Frye 188
Hill 183

Dallas
252 attempt gap 1-5
Dirk 398
Terry 266
Shawn M 182
Kidd 153
Barea 146

Aside for the Suns who are close we are much stronger depth wise and thus have a big advantage if a potential injury takes a player out for a bit. The depth also allows the spreading of minutes to our key people much more than that of the other contenders and is another factor that can help prevent a potential injury.
Also allows lessor players more minutes than most other teams.

Again most of this just points out the obvious.

(now if we can get Rondo to make 50+ % of his foul shots, Perk seems to be getting there.)

beat