Our FT defense is going to take a beating when we play the Lakers on Tuesday. Too bad, that was the only thing our defense has been good at all season.
Update: the Rockets continue to enjoy an advantage in free throws. Coming into the game, they were 3rd in FTM/FGA on offense and 1st in FTM/FGA allowed on D. Their FT advantage is 3rd overall in the league, worse than only OKC and LAL. Tonight, HOU was 17 for 22 from the line while ATL went 6 for 7 (now that's elite level FT defense). Even in a blowout loss to OKC, HOU attempted more FTs than OKC and made just one less.
Correct me if I'm wrong. It seems that if you want to maximize the ratio of FTM/FGA, you want maximize FTM (numerator) and minimize FGA (denominator). So of the 2 scenarios below: 1) Drawing a foul with a missed shot - It would not increase FGA but there's a chance for 2 or the 3 FTM if they're made. 2) Drawing a foul while making the shot - It would increase FGA by 1 since it was a made shot and you could potentially get an additional FTM max with the and one. It would seem scenario 1 could potentially boost this stat more than scenario 2 (i.e. this stat doesn't increase as much if you actually make the shot, so you're penalized if you're a good finisher). So when Harden actually draws a foul and finishes he is actually dropping this ratio?
Nah, the ratio is less than 1, so no matter what he is increasing the overall total of FTM/FGA, just not at the same rate as when we take 2 or possibly 3 FTs to no FGA.
It's not invalid, it just isn't perfect. In general, if you are a team that makes 15 FTs a game to 50 FGs per game, it's better than making 10 FTs a game to 50 FGs per game. You are going to catch some teams that don't get as many FGAs because they don't hit the shot when they are fouled... but I think it would be rare to have one team make like 8 and-1s in a game and another team make like 2 per game. In that one corner case, the team with more and-1s would have the lower rate. And if you really wanted to you could account for that one small case by counting the number of and-1s and perhaps adding it to the FT column rather than the FG column. But that's not really the point, the point is that FT/FGA is a good representation of how much your team scores from the FT line.
The measurement is imperfect, not invalid. There are not enough "And 1s" out there, and not enough variation among teams' frequency in getting And 1s for this to become a factor in terms of making a team that draws And 1s frequently to become significantly underrated in terms of free throw drawing prowess by the FTM/FGA stat. FTM/FGA is also not the only measure of a team's ability to score off FTs. Some prefer to look at FTA/FGA, you can also look at FTM or FTA per possession.
I am wondering whether this stat is related with the points allowed per game? Usually rookies tend to send opponents to the FT line.
There are indeed much more than these, I can hardly call the differences an advantage. In the offense , it tends to present the actual effective rate because the stats tend to average out among the teams. Yet there are still systemic error such as made by and-1 (which can yield up to 10.8% error as Minnesota), per FGA, technical free throw, and hack-a-Dwight call. Where on the defensive side is how this analysis totally falls. There are teams would rather give up free throws than easily baskets, and it is wrong to judge the defensive effectiveness by the opp FTM/FGA. Rox are ranked 3rd on opp FTM/FGA, but they are ranks 20th on DefEff. On the other hand, Clippers are ranked 28th on opp FTM/FGA ,but they are ranks 4th on DefEff.
You do understand that he rarely actually travels, don't you? Eurostep is not a travel, it just looks like one to basketball newbies.
Nobody is "judging defensive effectiveness" SOLELY on the basis of FTM/FGA. Preventing free throws, just like preventing open 3 pointers and preventing offensive rebounds, etc., is obviously only ONE ASPECT of playing defense. However, this doesn't mean that it is not an important aspect of defense any more than, for example, defensive rebounding percentage is not an important aspect of defense just because it does not tell the whole story about how good a team's D is. Nobody is saying that the Rockets are an elite defensive team right now based on FTM/FGA. I am simply using it to note the team's advantage in the area of free throws and speculate on the origin of what I believe to be an interesting trend. To me, the questions are whether being judicious about fouls (other than in exceptional situations like end of game intentional fouls and hacking low FT% shooters) is a deliberate team strategy and whether the choice is based on some of the analytics done by the front office.
From watching games, it seems the Rockets are just letting teams shoot unhindered a lot. Asik also tends to let some dunks/layups go rather than obvious fouling at times. Certainly part of that is just not giving full effort on defense. But other times, they're clearly not even trying to get in the way. So while the Rockets do indeed have great "FT defense," they're also 26th in the NBA in eFG% given up at a staggering 51%. In the end, it's still a give and take. They're 16th in defensive efficiency despite their high pace, and even better than that over the past games(they were ranked as low as 22nd). So in that sense it seems to be working.
