A few inches make a big difference. Sometimes you just need to get a few closer shots to get your stroke back.
Can someone with ESPN Insider post the contents of this 2012 article, please? http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7791774/nba-midrange-game-case-good-inefficiency
No, I am saying the midrange game should be a shot we look to take, not just one you take when the 3 point shot is not there. If your players are consistently taking the shots they will not be fluid when the D forces them. The big issue here is that people look at how low midrange percentages are and assume that it's a bad shot. What they discount is that there are a lot of bad mid-range shots being taken. Turn around jumpers, desperation shots, long 2's, etc. When I am advocating here is not that. It's taking the sort of wide open 2 point jump shot we are getting in the corners. If Harden and Lin can't hit a jumper from the FT line at 60% they suck. Heck, they should be making a shot like that at 80%. We're talking wide open. Wide open mid-range shots are easy, I mean, the easiest shot in basketball is a dunk. Then it's a layup. Then it's a wide open jump shot from 15 feet away. We need to shoot more wide open mid-range shots.
That's fine, so long as the team doesn't drift too far away from getting high efficiency shots. Mix in enough mid-range shots to keep the defense guessing and give the team more options their comfortable with when the 3-point shot isn't falling. But building an offense specifically geared towards generating a ton of mid-range shots is a bad strategy unless you have superhuman shot makers, because that will just yield a lot of contested mid-range shots which are the worst shots in basketball. It would be cool if there's a study somewhere that examines shooting percentages on open mid-range shots. I'd like to know if is as high-percentage as you think, and also how often teams generate such shots. I wish SportsVU provided these stats publicly.
I agree that taking contested midrange shots should be minimized. Those are the worst shots in basketball. It is too bad about open mid-range shots not having much data but pay attention to open mid-range shots when you watch basketball and see how ridiculously often they go in. The problem isn't making an open mid-range shot, it's finding them. Too often midrange shots are the result of failed attempts to get to the rim or off balance or over the out-stretched hand of a defender which probably goes in at a very low clip and drags the overall percentage of midrange shots down. I mean, look at a guy like LMA. The man is feasting on a mid-range game. So does LeBron. One reason guys like that can be so successful at the mid-range is because their height essentially makes them open. Defenses can't close. Harden may never had the midrange game of a T-mac or Lebron, but we can incorporate the shot ala Luis Scola. I think a guy like Terrance Jones can be a competent shooter and not only have to rely on 3 point shots to spread the floor and keep defenses guessing. Dmo is another one. A 4 or 5 trying to double down on Dwight isn't going to be able to recover fast enough to bother a Jones or DMo 15 footer if they are on the opposite baseline or wing.
60% is easily doable - we are talking uncontested shots here. I think I should have clarified but had assumed everyone understood that .
I found the following googling the topic: http://www.hickory-high.com/?p=10797 It provides a neat visualization on "catch and shoot" jump shots for all players through Dec 13th, split between mid-range and 3-pointers. Catch-and-shoot doesn't necessarily mean uncontested, but I suppose its much more likely to be uncontested. The league average for catch-and-shoot mid-range jump shots is only 42% or 0.85 PPS (pretty far from 60%). The Rockets currently shoot 35% on 3s, which is a 1.05 PPS. The league average for catch-and-shoot 3s is 38.3% or 1.15 PPS. From the visualization, it shows only a small handful of players are more than 1.2 PPS (60%) on mid-range catch-and-shoot jumpers.
One thing that is often overlooked with mid range versus 3 pointers is that 3 point attempts leads to more rebounding opportunities. The average team is rebounding about a 26% of its misses and scores about 1.02 points per possession. Assuming the 26% ORB% for both mid range and 3 point attempts and 1.02 ppp on second+ chance opportunities, a team would have to make 63% of open mid range looks to equal that of a team shooting 40% from 3 point line. 3's .4* 3 + .26* .60 * 1.02 = 1.36 points per possession mid range 2's .63 * 2 + .26 * .37 * 1.02 = 1.36 ppp
I would think they would also lead to more fastbreak opportunities for the opposing team. But, I'm not sure how to track that and compare.
Morey ball is just layups and taking threes. He believes those are higher percentage shots. He has a rage every time someone takes a jumper.
Your numbers are way too high. You may think guys should shoot uncontested shots at those rates, but they just don't. 50% is too high.
The Philadelphia 76ers have built an historically great defense upon the principle of forcing opponents into shooting long 2-point jump shots, but an unhealthy dose of midrange jumpers can kill a team's offense, too. Per Hoopdata's stats, the only shot distance that has a significant impact on a team's offensive efficiency is the percentage of field goal attempts taken from 16-23 feet. That the impact is negative shouldn't be very surprising, either -- after all, the expected value of a given shot from that range this season is just 0.76 points per attempt. Put another way: if all else is equal, the difference between having the league's lowest percentage of shots from 16-23 feet (Denver's 15.5 percent) and its highest (Charlotte's 35.2 percent) is worth 6.5 points per 100 possessions. That's a bigger boost to an offense than replacing a league-average point guard with Chris Paul. For all the hemming and hawing by purists over the "lost art" of the midrange game, the basic math on those shots appears to be quite damning. If the average player makes 38 percent of his shots from 16-23 feet -- shots that are still worth just two points -- and 35 percent on 3-pointers, why not eschew the long midrange jumper entirely and instead take a shot that gives you an extra point? That's essentially where the game is heading. In just six seasons, the league has gone from taking 26.9 percent of its shots from 16-23 feet to 24.5 percent. Simply, teams are learning to cut out the game's least efficient type of shot. This trend also tracks with the rise of individual efficiency stats. Almost universally, players who take a large percentage of their field goal attempts from 16-23 feet also have a low personal offensive rating, a useful all-in-one efficiency metric that tracks a player's expected points when he ends a possession with a shot, assist, drawn foul or turnover. Splitting up the 140 players who have attempted 403 or more field goals this season into four groups based on their percentage of shots taken from 16-23 feet, you can see a clear relationship between individual efficiency and the tendency to hoist midrange jumpers: As was the case with teams, the more shots a player takes from midrange, the less efficient an offensive player he will be. Not only does he by definition take fewer high-efficiency shots at the rim or from beyond the arc, but he is also less likely to draw a foul when taking a long jump shot. Given this, convincing players to leave the midrange jumper out of their repertoire would seem to be an intelligent decision for any NBA team. However, there is some counterintuitive evidence that players who have the midrange jumper in their arsenal still help teams score more efficiently while on the court. Even after controlling for a player's own rates of possession usage, shooting efficiency (as measured by effective field goal percentage, a stat that adjusts for 3-pointers being worth 1.5 times as many points as 2-pointers) and assists, the percentage of his FGA that came from 16-23 feet was actually a positive variable when predicting his impact on the team's overall effective field goal percentage. That finding was also true when running the same test on team turnover percentage -- the more of a midrange game a player has, the more he helps his team avoid giveaways. Why might this be? One theory is that merely having the ability to score from the midrange opens the floor up for a player's teammates. According to 82games.com, just as 3-point attempts per minute is a positive predictor of offensive impact even after holding all other stats equal, players who can knock down shots from 16-23 feet force the defense to respect them from more places on the basketball court, which in turn creates precious space for other players. There's value in keeping the defense honest. There's also the matter of a player's shot difficulty as it relates to his role on the team. Among players with at least 1,200 FGA over the past three seasons, high-usage perimeter players (players listed as guards or guard-forwards by Basketball-Reference.com) took a greater percentage of their shots from midrange than those with lower usage rates. While minimizing midrange shots is a good general rule at the team level, even the most midrange-avoidant teams take 15-20 percent of their field goals from that range, shots that high-usage players frequently have to create from scratch. Take, for instance, the 20 highest-usage players in the league. As a group, these players are assisted on a much lower percentage of their field goals than the NBA average, because in order to consume so many possessions, a player must increasingly create scoring chances for himself. But even by those players' already self-sufficient standards, they get very little help on the 16-23 foot jumper. Here are the percentages of assisted field goals by shot distance for the 20 biggest possession users, versus the league average (see chart): At every other location, high-usage players are a uniform 13-14 percentage points below the NBA average in terms of requiring assists. But on 16-23 foot jumpers, that number zooms to 17.6 percent, meaning the degree of difficulty on midrange J's is upped considerably for the best shot-creators. Whether they're forced to shoot under duress at the end of the shot clock or trying other tough chances that no one else on the floor is willing to take, this increased difficulty explains why high-usage players are so valuable even if their efficiency isn't necessarily pretty. Perhaps no player exemplifies this phenomenon more than Toronto's Andrea Bargnani. Despised by some in the stats crowd, Bargnani perennially takes 25-30 percent of his shots from midrange, and as a predictable result his efficiency metrics are always below average. Yet a regression to determine player impact on offensive Four Factors found that Bargnani's presence boosts the team's effective field goal percentage by 0.6 points and reduces his team's turnover rate by 0.3 points while he's on the floor. For evidence corroborating his on-court influence, check Toronto's record with (13-18, 42 percent winning percentage) and without (7-19, 27 percent) him this season. On paper? Bargnani is the textbook high-usage, low-efficiency player. But his actual impact goes much further than that. Of course, a more efficient player is preferable to a less efficient one, given the same levels of usage and shot difficulty. But the next time you see someone decry the midrange tendencies of a high-usage player with low efficiency ratings, remember that at least some of that apparent lack of efficiency is due to absorbing the (necessary) tough shots that inevitably arise during a game. By being willing to take those chances -- and make them at a higher rate than his teammates would -- the high-usage player sacrifices his efficiency stats for the good of the team as a whole.
You are right. I don't know how to relate transition defense to shooting percentage. I would expect weakening the transition defense would cut into the effectiveness of the 3 pta, but would think it would require a mid range shot to be somewhere between 60-63% for it to match the effectiveness of a 3 point attempt.
Here are the latest catch-and-shoot stats from NBA.com/stats which I have summed up per team (plus added a few other metrics): Team CaS_2FGM CaS_2FGA CaS_3FGM CaS_3FGA CaS_2FG% CaS_3FG% CaS_2PPS CaS_3PPS CaS_2FGA% CaS_PPS 1 POR 164 351 234 536 46.8% 43.7% 0.94 1.31 39.5% 1.16 2 DAL 122 239 211 528 51.1% 40.1% 1.02 1.20 31.2% 1.15 3 MIA 88 210 219 522 42.1% 42.0% 0.84 1.26 28.7% 1.14 4 GSW 98 227 200 474 43.1% 42.3% 0.86 1.27 32.3% 1.14 5 ATL 147 319 257 625 46.1% 41.1% 0.92 1.23 33.8% 1.13 6 IND 145 296 178 437 49.0% 40.7% 0.98 1.22 40.4% 1.12 7 HOU 28 71 251 657 38.9% 38.1% 0.78 1.14 9.8% 1.11 8 PHX 66 163 227 579 40.7% 39.2% 0.81 1.17 21.9% 1.10 9 BKN 109 244 190 478 44.8% 39.7% 0.90 1.19 33.8% 1.09 10 WAS 104 259 197 476 40.3% 41.4% 0.81 1.24 35.2% 1.09 11 NOP 141 337 154 351 41.8% 43.8% 0.84 1.32 49.0% 1.08 12 SAS 115 283 208 517 40.6% 40.3% 0.81 1.21 35.4% 1.07 13 LAL 124 278 222 578 44.4% 38.5% 0.89 1.15 32.5% 1.07 14 TOR 74 177 169 438 41.7% 38.6% 0.83 1.16 28.8% 1.07 15 NYK 147 317 212 555 46.4% 38.2% 0.93 1.14 36.4% 1.07 16 BOS 121 260 150 411 46.4% 36.5% 0.93 1.09 38.8% 1.03 17 DEN 100 241 160 421 41.3% 38.1% 0.83 1.14 36.5% 1.03 18 CLE 122 287 164 433 42.4% 37.8% 0.85 1.13 39.9% 1.02 19 OKC 110 255 136 379 43.0% 35.9% 0.86 1.08 40.3% 0.99 20 ORL 165 388 166 451 42.5% 36.9% 0.85 1.11 46.2% 0.99 21 PHI 89 214 177 505 41.6% 35.1% 0.83 1.05 29.8% 0.99 22 MIN 105 275 186 508 38.0% 36.6% 0.76 1.10 35.1% 0.98 23 UTA 129 347 183 485 37.1% 37.6% 0.74 1.13 41.7% 0.97 24 LAC 126 299 188 548 42.1% 34.2% 0.84 1.03 35.3% 0.96 25 MIL 103 290 153 409 35.6% 37.3% 0.71 1.12 41.5% 0.95 26 MEM 131 347 132 348 37.7% 38.0% 0.75 1.14 49.9% 0.95 27 CHI 132 329 124 358 40.1% 34.5% 0.80 1.04 47.9% 0.92 28 SAC 88 244 139 399 36.0% 34.7% 0.72 1.04 37.9% 0.92 29 CHA 123 340 132 389 36.3% 33.8% 0.73 1.01 46.6% 0.88 30 DET 52 184 150 447 28.3% 33.5% 0.57 1.00 29.1% 0.88 Source: http://stats.nba.com/playerTrackingCatchShoot.html?pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=100 We are 7th overall in points per shot on our catch-and-shoot jumpers. There is, by the way, a somewhat negative correlation (R^2 is around 16%) between percentage of catch-and-shoot jumpers which are inside the arc and PPS on catch-and-shoot jumpers. It is interesting to note that we actually shoot worse on catch-and-shoot 3s and 2s than every other team in the top 15 of this list. But because of our extreme shot selection we still end up 7th in catch-and-shoot efficiency.
