Last Week's Chart Dump
February Shooting Luck, Long-Range Unicorn, and Hooks and Floaters
I decided I’m reworking the posting schedule of chart dumps, so this chart dump and all the future ones will go off on Monday and serve as a recap of the previous week. Let’s start with the charts now, first off - the shooting luck.
February Defensive Shooting Luck
Last week brought us the first day of March, which is an ideal opportunity to take a look at which teams had the best/worst defensive shooting luck in the previous month.
The New York Knicks had a rough February. Battles with injury (Anunoby, Randle, Hartenstein, and more), trade additions in Bogdanović and Burks, and a bit rougher schedule led to only a 4-8 score in February. Along with that, they’ve had the worst luck out of all teams when it comes to defending wide-open 3-point shots.
Their opponents seemed to catch fire in games versus them as they’ve shot 9% better vs them than they do on average from the 3-point range while being wide-open (a shot is wide open when the closest defender is further than 6 or more feet). That was probably a big factor in the league’s worst defensive rating through February at only 123.6. The Knicks are usually always on the opposite side of the “shooting luck”, as the opponents always seem to shoot worse versus them than on average.
The Kings also had some misfortune, as they were the 2nd worst team, and the Magic were also on the negative side. They had their share of the luck at the start of the season, but despite the luck normalizing they’re still 5th best team in the entire league in defensive rating.
The Wizards are the complete opposite of those 3 teams, they’ve had the best defensive shooting luck, and yet they didn’t manage to snag a single win in the entire month.
Long-Range Unicorn
The NBA’s obsession with the term unicorn started with one player who is now a staple of the Celtics’ league-leading team - Kristaps Porzingis. And although in the end, we’ve had players more worthy of such a nickname (Victor Wembanyama is the most obvious choice) Porzingis is still a unique player who has gone through the turmoil of the NBA.
From being the face of the team with the Knicks but putting up mostly empty numbers on the team, to being a second option on the Mavs and struggling to fit in next to a more potent option to then growing up and unlocking a completely new dimension to his game in Washington which he translated to an even better level with the Celtics.
But the thing that enables the Celtics the most is Kristaps’ absurd range. When they go with their standard pick-and-pop plays, the Celtics can run the screen insanely high and thus give a ridiculous amount of space to Tatum, Brown, or one of the guards and still have a 37%+ shooting option standing mostly free if they need a “Get Out of Jail Free card” in the form of Porzingis.
If we observe the top 20 players in total 3-point shot attempts over 27 feet (so more than 3 feet further than the 3-point line), Porzingis is the only 7-footer along with Brook Lopez that appears on this chart, and he’s shooting 4% better than him on those shots.
You can count on the fingers of one hand all the players that have equal or better FG3% on such long-range shots - only Klay, Steph, Dame, and Luka have better percentages on those shots - that’s impressive.
Even if we disregard the efficiency aspect, the sheer volume and distance of his 3-point attempts make him a unique player when observing only big men (7ft+) in the past 15 years.
This chart is a bit cluttered (more than a bit), but it’s a good indicator of how isolated Porzingis is in his cluster to the top of the chart. The only player that comes remotely close to him is already mentioned Brook Lopez, but his 3-point shots are still half a foot shorter on average than Kristaps (Lopez has the luxury of playing with Giannis who can stomp through defenders in isolation - thus being more than content by standing in the corner and simply waiting for the ball to come to his hands).
There is a very significant jump in his average 3-point distance from 2017-18 to 2019-20 - the first year of playing with Luka Dončić. Since then the volume of the shots has been a bit lower, but his 3-point efficiency has been dancing around 38% which is above league average and in the upper tier of efficiency compared to his big men colleagues.
All of this makes the Celtics’ offense click at an insane level, allowing them to sit comfortably in the 1st place and clearing the 2nd placed Pacers by 1.6 pts/100 possessions. Porzingis unlocks a new dimension of spacing whenever he’s on the court, and if he’s being matched with shorter players to try and cover that space, the Celtics can instantly go to a Porzingis post-up where he is putting up an insane 1.38 PPP.
Hooks and Floaters
We’ll keep this section clean and simple. I’ve gone on to explore the hook shot efficiency after watching several Cavs games recently because I was impressed with Jarrett Allen’s post and short roll game, as he continuously scores from tough situations with his hook shot.
So I wasn’t surprised when I saw that he’s among the best in the league in both volume and efficiency on hook shots. Hook shot was always a part of his arsenal, but this season he’s increased hook shot efficiency by 10% compared to the past season (and previous ones - as he was constantly hovering around 50%). The volume also increased, and he’s currently at 110 total hook shots versus 118 in the last season.
Everyone is probably aware of Jonas’ and Jokić’s hook shots, but Ivica Zubac is currently the league leader (by far) in the hook shots efficiency. He is having a career year on all fronts for the LA Clippers, and will certainly be a huge factor coming into the playoffs as the remaining contenders all have a big presence (or more of them) inside the paint - but this can be an entirely separate post.
Float Like a Butterfly - Sting Like a Bee
Floaters are usually associated with guards, but we have an increasing trend of big men getting more and more comfortable with those shots. I’ve talked about Sengun’s signature shot in my first-ever post on Substack:
Sengun didn’t manage to crack the top-20 in total attempts though, but he sits nearby at the 26th spot, and Nikola Vučević, another European big man with soft touch is also located just outside of the top-20 - at the 21st spot.
But there are some big men inside the top 20, Nikola Jokić is even more efficient in floaters than in hook shots, shooting them at an absurd 63% which also leads the list of these and many other players, while Jaren Jackson Jr. and Karl-Anthony Towns also cracked the top 20.
The other most interesting thing on this chart is Tyus Jones in the 3rd overall spot in terms of total floating shots. But the more interesting thing is that Tyus takes 61% of all 2-pointers in the form of floaters. His 54.43% percentage on floaters is greater than his overall field goal percentage on 2-point shot attempts (53.6%). That’s also a significant improvement compared to the previous season, where he shot 46.88% on floaters throughout the year.
Other Stuff From the Past Week
If you’ve missed it, I’ve also written about the NBA Arena Effect and how some teams/arenas record shot locations differently or unusually. You can check that article here:
The NBA Arena Effect
On Twitter, I’ve written some things down when watching the game between the Mavs and the Cavs. I often write notes when watching games, especially during the replays of the games, so I wonder if this sort of content would be interesting to do on Substack as well. It would be a more fluent read than cramming everything in dozens of tweets, so I’ll post down a poll, and let me know what you think.
That’s all for this edition, have a nice week!