Comments on: Nichols and Dime: Rating Shooting Abilities

By: Jon Nichols

Jon Nichols — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:44:42 +0000

The foul efficiency is calculated like the efficiency for all other shots. It’s points scored divided by 2*total attempts. So for three-pointers, it’s (3*3PM)/(2*3PA). For two-pointers, its just FGM/FGA.

For free throws, we have to estimate total attempts as if they were possessions. We can’t just do FTM/FTA. The general rule people use to guess possessions used by free throw attempts is (2*.44*FTA). It’s .44 and not .5 (which at first is what you’d assume because you get two free throws per trip to the line usually) because of And-1′s. So to calculate TS% for free throws, it is FTM/(2*.44*FTA).

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:31:56 +0000

I was bored, and went ahead and exported this on my own excel. Here’s an interesting tidbit. I added a “Sum” column that totals these ratings in a rudimentary fashion, and got this:

Nash PHX PG 295
CalderonTOR PG 287
Durant OKC SF 287
Paul NOH PG 285
R.Allen BOS SG 281

However, since 3 pointers need to be weighed higher, (did a modifier that multiplied the three point efficiency by 1.5), a different result came.

Nash PHX PG 331
CalderonTOR PG 323
R.Allen BOS SG 323
Durant OKC SF 318.5
M.WilliamsCLE PG 307.5

I guess I don’t understand the foul efficiency as much, since I’m trying to figure out how to correlate ft shooting % into it. What exactly is the foul efficieny rating?

Thanks for the numbers!

By: Jon Nichols

Jon Nichols — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:35:29 +0000

Unfortunately, with Google Docs, I haven’t yet figured out a way to add sorting functionality.

Running the same numbers on teams is very doable and interesting. I’ll keep that in mind for the future.

By: thomas whigham

thomas whigham — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:33:28 +0000

Please explain how to sort the data in ascending order based on a shot range (if possible)

By: Garron

Garron — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:50:04 +0000

Love the post. The data’s really good, and the fact that you can do it for different type’s of shots is excellent. Is there a way you can sort the data in order? I can’t even find a way to do it in excel.

A challenge that you can do, for seeing how to improve a team (or how to defend a team better) is to create the same rankings but for teams (as well as for teams based on position for example, who has the total best midrange centers etc).

Though no teams release their data, I bet there would be certain teams who do the same sort of data with rebounding (best rebounding rates for short, long or tipped rebounds etc). That would be great, but unfortunately is not data that the public can work for.