I saw in the 'least favorite player' thread that there was some decrying of early in the shot clock shots by Mr. Nate Robinson. But it got me wondering, How bad of a thing would a few quicker shots be?
Some things to consider when looking back at last season's offensive numbers:
1. Boston was 23rd out of 30 for pace. Is this important? I don't know. Perhaps playing at a slower pace helps set up the defense, which of course is the team's calling card. Certainly it's easier to set up defense after a made basket, so if slow pace leads to high percentage baskets, then yes, slow pace helps. However, the worst thing for setting up defense is turnovers, a point i'll get to next:
2. Boston was 27th out of 30 for taking care of the ball. Bad. Only Minny, Clips, and Charlotte were worse. Boston turned it over 14.9 times per game (which was 21st out of 30), but because of the slow pace, this was actually 25.3% of their possessions, which was terrible.
3. On the flipside, Boston was 4th out of 30 for overall fieldgoal percentage, which is excellent. It was this point that allowed Boston to finish with 13th/30 offensive efficiency; not elite, but not bad either.
So my question is this: Earlier shots are much much less likely to end with a turnover, but are probably less likely to be better shots. So what is the acceptable tradeoff?
In dealing with absolute numbers, let's say that 2 times per game a player launched a quick shot. there was a 25% chance each of those possessions would otherwise end in a turnover. Therefore, there was a 75% chance that said possession would end with a shot; therefore only a 56.25 percent chance that both of those possessions would end with a shot, a 6.25% chance that both would end in a turnover, and a 37.5% chance that one of those quick shots would have otherwise been a turnover. Over the long haul, essentially if the C's guaranteed themselves 2 shots by shooting quickly, they'd lose about .5 turnovers per game or, by definition, gain .5 possessions (shots) per game. Now, quick shots like the ones we are talking about are unlikely to be foul shots. The C's shot 4865 two pointers last year and 1433 threes. So of this .5 new possessions, assuming a similar ratio of shots, this would lead to .522 more points per game for the C's if the shooting percentages remained the same. In fact, with .5 more possessions per game, the overall fg% for the C's would have to drop to about, say, .518 instead of .522 on twos and from .348 to .345 on threes. But better than those percentages, it would absolutely help the C's to guarantee avoiding turnovers this year to help the offense.
Something to think about.
