I'm not picking sides but a question. How's Mobley's FG percentage rank versus people within 2 FGA of him at the SG position? I believe this would be more telling on how good Cat's FG percentage is than by comparing him to all SGs. I'm more of a point/FGA or adjusted FG% person myself. Timing, Being 21 of 29 is not horrid, low yes. Is bottom third, but he's closer to the average SG in FG% than the worst. TMo's FG % is horrid.
The reason I'll reject that it is a streak is because the numbers that total 45% include the games at the beginning of the season plus recent games. I would be curious to know Cat's % after the allstar game last season when the team really came together. I don't have time, however. I'm going to use an analogy. Have you heard of a micro-climate? The regional Houston weather is X degrees for the year. But if you look at downtown Houston vs. Clear Lake, you'll see real differences. I'm arguing that the season stats aren't telling the whole picture. Sometimes there are variances within a sample that can be coorrelated to something meaningful. I'll have to "officially" state that you are correct until otherwise proven wrong. Time will tell. If after next season with a whole year together playing good ball, we'll see what the % is. I guess I'm going out on a limb by saying that I think you'll see a marked improvement based on these stats. Maybe I'm wrong. But what I have shown is that when Steve is in the game, Cat tends to play better. When those two things happen, the Rocks play over 500 ball. I'm not so certain Cat's % can be dismissed only as poor shooting. I've demonstrated a compelling argument that Cat's shooting % may simply be a by-product of a larger issue. But you have yet to present any tangible support that relate Cat's shooting pertentage to our losing record. You simply make assumptions. Afterall, Iverson has a worse % but they won last season. Iverson has more steals but not as many blocks. Cat doesn't have nearly as many TO's and is a much better rebounder. I don't buy the argument that Cat is a source to our problems, if that is what you are suggesting.
I am repeating myself (across threads) but I'll (try to) keep it short. Mobley is in the top 8 scoring for SGs. His FG% is better than 3 of the other 7--despite playing with the worst group of players around him. One of these players Mobley shoots better than includes Vince Carter. He also shoots equal to or better from the field and better from 3 than the next 2 highest scoring 2s--Spree and Jones. In fact Mobley shoots 3s better than any of the other top 10 socering SGs. So all but a handful of teams and players would gladly have 43% shooting from the field and 43% from 3s WITH 20+PPG out of their starting 2. You can say Mobley shoots worse than 21 of 29 starting 2s. You can also say 6 of the 9 SGs with the lowest FG% happen to be in the top 10 in scoring. Perhaps Mobleys average range of FG% among the elite SGs and poor range of FG% among all starting SGs reveals more about the difficulties the best SGs face than it does about Mobley's decision making and shooting ability.
Some tests for someone that cares. 1) Create an x/y plot with ppg being x and FG% being y. Use the best fit line feature to create a correlation between points scored and FG%. Is Mobley above or below the line? 2) Find the Starting SG percentage by adding up all FGM and dividing them by the sum FGA. J Johnson is the SG of Boston?
Very nice point. Jeff, you promised us some insight into your numbers that you began this thread with. You havn't chimed in yet.
I used the top 25 scoring SGs who I know start for their team. There was a small-modest negative relationship between scoring and FG%. Those that scored more, tended to shoot a lower percentage: öòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòûòòòòòûòòòòòø ó óPPG óFGPRCó ùòòòòòûòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòôòòòòòôòòòòòú óPPG óPearson ó1 ó-.209ó ó óCorrelation ó ó ó ó ùòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòôòòòòòôòòòòòú ó óSig. (2-tailed)ó. ó.316 ó ó ùòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòôòòòòòôòòòòòú ó óN ó25 ó25 ó ùòòòòòôòòòòòòòòòòòòòòòôòòòòòôòòòòòú I have some graphs but I don't know how to paste them here. However, I can describe the key findings: Mobley was just barely (I mean barely) below the line--suggesting his shooting is just below what would be predicted based on PPG of these 25 SGs. However, Iverson, Spree, Carter, Hardaway and Richardson were far worse "negative outliers" (-1 standardized residual or more). The most positive outliers--e.g., those who shot much better than expected (+1 standardized residuals or more)--included Miller, Bryant, Allen and Barry. Mobley was with the group of all other players (-1< standardized residulas >+1). Another way to look at it is the average of all these guards shot .4446. However, the average shooting (total makes/total shots) for these 25 guards is .4410--closer to Mobley's .4333. The adjustment doesn't make that much difference, but we are talking about less than .01 difference. BTW-the mean shooting of the 10 top scoring shooting guards is .4351--about 18 one thousandths different shooting % than Mobley. I want to end by saying don't take the numbers too seriously. It is only based on 25 players and on this years games. Perhaps more importantly, there are other important statistics as Joe Joe suggests--and even more so--these numbers or any individual statistical numbers used in a a team game need to be interpreted with context. Is there any doubt playing with Shaq or Duncan is going to increase the shooting of most guards--not in my mind.
My point was that Cat's shooting % was NOT "horrid" and that his % is not harming the team. So relative to other SG's, Cat is average. That being said he's one of the few with that high a % and scoring 20+ ppg. Other premier SG's are much worse %-wise yet their teams have seen successes. Plus I beleive Cat's #'s only stand to get better as he logs more time with Steve in the lineup. Timing, care to chime in?
Here's a site I made to place some data on ADJ FG% and PPS for shooting guards. http://siegc.tripod.com/guardstats022002/ A side note, stats are more useful when coupled with observation of games. I've not done the second part well so take this look for what its worth.
Wow, Joe Joe! That is amazing stuff. And it supports what Desert and myself have been saying. Mobley's FG% at worst is average but cosidering point production is rather good. The notion that Mobley is having a positive effect on the team's FG% is interesting too. thanks for that info. I'd love to see more objective analysis around here rather than seeing...Cat sux. gee thanks for that.
Desert Scar, Could you post the FG% vs PPG line you generated if yoiu still have it? Mobley is above the Adj FG% vs PPG line now for the season.
