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"Ball." |
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OK, let's talk about field goal percentage, shall we? How can I put this delicately? As a measure of offensive efficiency, it sucks ass. It's as pointless as measuring a hitter in baseball through batting average. Luckily, baseball analysts have wised up in recent years and now commonly use OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) to measure hitters. They figured out that judging hitters based on their batting average makes about as much sense as judging a museum based on its gift shop – of course, I make that analogy because both baseball and museums are extremely boring. Anyway, let's bury field goal percentage for good and replace it with these two much more potent measurements: eFG% (effective field goal percentage) and TS% (true shooting percentage). FG% doesn't give three-point baskets any more value than two-point baskets and doesn't include free throw shooting, so it distorts things to make Shaquille O'Neal (.593 FG% last season) look like a more efficient scorer than Steve Nash (.504). This, of course, is horseshit. Effective field goal percentage gives extra value to three-pointers made using the formula (FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA so sharpshooters like Nash get rewarded. Then, if you want to include free throw accuracy into the mix – since somebody who gets to the line a lot and is a good free throw shooter should get their daps – you determine true shooting percentage using the formula PTS / (2 * (FGA + 0.44 * FTA)). And don't ask me how that formula was derived. Do I look like John freakin' Hollinger over here? Getting back to Stevie Canada and Assmaster Shaq (you see what I did there? It's like Grandmaster Flash but… ah, forget it), we see that Nash's TS% in 07-08 was .641 while Shaq finished at .589. This confirms what everyone knows about not giving Shaq the ball late in the fourth quarter because of his bricky tendencies at the stripe. Coincidentally, last season's TS% leader was another Phoenix Sun. Amare Stoudemire finished with a .656 TS% because he's such a devastating inside scorer and he also made 80 percent of his free throws. On The Raptors, Jose Calderon led the team with a .607 TS% and Chris Bosh was right behind him at .588. Note that Jermaine O'Neal's career TS% is .511, which is 69 points below last season's mark for Anthony Parker, 50 points below Jason Kapono and 29 points below Jamario Moon. Keep that in mind when you think that JO should be Option 1B in the Raptors' offence next season. For a point of reference, Antonio Davis' career TS% was .518 and we all know what an offensive force he was. |
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