82 Games: Bucks Offensive Shooting Stats

[midranger]

We already have the defensive stats so I'll post these to foster another discussions.


First of all.

The Bucks attempted 38% of their shots from inside. Good for #2 overall in the NBA. Conversely, 19% of our shots were three pointers, which placed us at #24 in the NBA. Of our inside shots, 53% were assisted. That's the 11th most in the NBA. Not only were we taking a ton of inside shots, we were passing to get them.

Anyone trying to propagate the myth that Mike and Mo mindlessly threw up 28 foot 3 pointers with 20 seconds on the clock all season, please light yourself on fire now.

Good.

Now that that's cleared up lets continue.

Where are our problems?

The biggest problem that I see was our production inside. Relative to all other NBA teams, this is where our offense was focused (being #2 overall in percentage of shots attempted). The problem is that we shot 54.9% from inside. That is good for second WORST in the NBA. So the spot where we shot the second worst in the NBA, we decided it'd be a great idea to take the second most attempts in the NBA. That is horrible. The main perpatrator of this was of course Yi, who shot a disgusting 46.3% inside, though his attempts were fairly limited.

Other than that. I haven't seen these stats from the past couple years, but what I'm guessing (and I bet epi could halp out here) is that we were a very prolific 3 pt. shooting team 3 years ago (our last playoff year). I'm also guessing that saw a decline 2 years ago. Well, last year we pretty much bottomed out. As I stated, only 19% of our attempts were 3pters. which was 24th in the NBA. Couple that low number of attempts with our 6th worst in the league 34.5% shooting from 3pt and you have a weak team from outside. This should come as no surprise given the year that our designated shooters like Bell and Simmons had. CV of course didn't help at all. And even Redd was a couple tics lower than previous years. Only Mo actually shot the same or increased his 3pt. shooting proficiency.

So what did we do with some success relative to the rest of the NBA? Not inside, not outside, you guessd it, the midrange jumpshot. On 2 point jumpshots, we shot 40.4% which is good for 10th best in the NBA. We were bottom half in attempts at 19th most. Leading the way was Mo with his elite midrange game.


So while shooting 2pt jumpshots is certainly not a way to win in the NBA, it represented the only area of offensive advantage that we were likely to hold relative to our opponent on most nights. Oye.

[midranger]

Sorry. Link.

http://www.82games.com/FGTEAM11.HTM

[THE DINJ]

I would have liked to have seen some more 3s getting jacked up. When was the last time we saw the ball swing around to an open Mo/Redd for 3? It was all iso ball and forcing it inside (where it never came back out).

[midranger]

I would have liked to have seen some more 3s getting jacked up. When was the last time we saw the ball swing around to an open Mo/Redd for 3? It was all iso ball and forcing it inside (where it never came back out).

Three years ago, when we made the playoffs?

Anyway, there was a lot of forcing square pegs into round holes offensively last year. The results? Less than spectacular.

[crkone]

That shows that all the defense had to do was pack the lane since they knew the bucks couldn't make 3 pointers.

[jerrod]

Anyone trying to propagate the myth that Mike and Mo mindlessly threw up 28 foot 3 pointers with 20 seconds on the clock all season, please light yourself on fire now.

Good.

Now that that's cleared up lets continue.

That shows that all the defense had to do was pack the lane since they knew the bucks couldn't make 3 pointers.

shouldn't that have led to more attempts though?

[crkone]

-= original quote snipped =-



shouldn't that have led to more attempts though?

Not really. The mindset was to get inside and take higher percentage shots (I think), and they totally moved away from plays utilizing the 3 pointer. For the most part, the majority on this board wanted it to be like that but not be just 1/5 of the offense more like 1/4 of the offense. And we're talking about the Bucks here where we like to ISO in bad positions on the court.

[xTitan]

Damn...sounds like the elite shooting Mo Williams should bring a ton back in a trade...he is unreal.

[fam3381]

We were only 17th in the league in 3fg attempts in 05/06; however, we were very good when we did shoot from three, making 38% (4th in the league). That's why Epi IIRC often noted that for all the complaints about not going inside enough, above all else we probably should have shot more threes than we did. I don't have the breakdown of inside vs. 2 pt jumpers.

[AussieBuck]

We already have the defensive stats so I'll post these to foster another discussions.


First of all.

The Bucks attempted 38% of their shots from inside. Good for #2 overall in the NBA. Conversely, 19% of our shots were three pointers, which placed us at #24 in the NBA. Of our inside shots, 53% were assisted. That's the 11th most in the NBA. Not only were we taking a ton of inside shots, we were passing to get them.

Anyone trying to propagate the myth that Mike and Mo mindlessly threw up 28 foot 3 pointers with 20 seconds on the clock all season, please light yourself on fire now.

Good.

Now that that's cleared up lets continue.

Where are our problems?

The biggest problem that I see was our production inside. Relative to all other NBA teams, this is where our offense was focused (being #2 overall in percentage of shots attempted). The problem is that we shot 54.9% from inside. That is good for second WORST in the NBA. So the spot where we shot the second worst in the NBA, we decided it'd be a great idea to take the second most attempts in the NBA. That is horrible. The main perpatrator of this was of course Yi, who shot a disgusting 46.3% inside, though his attempts were fairly limited.

Other than that. I haven't seen these stats from the past couple years, but what I'm guessing (and I bet epi could halp out here) is that we were a very prolific 3 pt. shooting team 3 years ago (our last playoff year). I'm also guessing that saw a decline 2 years ago. Well, last year we pretty much bottomed out. As I stated, only 19% of our attempts were 3pters. which was 24th in the NBA. Couple that low number of attempts with our 6th worst in the league 34.5% shooting from 3pt and you have a weak team from outside. This should come as no surprise given the year that our designated shooters like Bell and Simmons had. CV of course didn't help at all. And even Redd was a couple tics lower than previous years. Only Mo actually shot the same or increased his 3pt. shooting proficiency.

So what did we do with some success relative to the rest of the NBA? Not inside, not outside, you guessd it, the midrange jumpshot. On 2 point jumpshots, we shot 40.4% which is good for 10th best in the NBA. We were bottom half in attempts at 19th most. Leading the way was Mo with his elite midrange game.


So while shooting 2pt jumpshots is certainly not a way to win in the NBA, it represented the only area of offensive advantage that we were likely to hold relative to our opponent on most nights. Oye.

I'm not sure I understand. I see that it's disappointing that we were 2nd worst on making shots from inside but that 54.9% is still the most efficient way we can score. Shouldn't we be concerned with taking more inside shots, followed by 3 pointers with a sparing amount of midrange shots?

[craig]

Ausia, I think you make a good point.

So:
Inside: 54.3%
3-Pointers: 34.5% = 51.2%.
Midrange: 40.4%

It still looks like the inside shots are the best to take.

Other random thoughts:
1. Improving our outside shooting would help. Maybe Mo, Redd, and Charlie should all spend a lot of their offseason practicing their shooting. They might get better at it, and shooting is something you can practice meaningfully by yourself. Defense isn't.

2. One nice way to get high-percentage inside shots is to run and shoot layups or dunks on the fast break. You can't expect to be near the top of the league on inside shooting if you intentionally play slow-down half-court ball, and try to force all of your inside shots against defenses rather than on the break. In other words, the inside percentage may simply be a matter of few fast breaks, rather than an indictment of the inside game during the half-court game.

3. Shooting percentages can be misleading because they don't fully represent offensive efficiency. If you're shooting 54% inside, but 10% of your attempts to force it inside result in turnovers, the higher incidence of turnovers factors into the actual efficiency of the inside game.

4. Not sure how free throws gets factored, but they factor into efficiency. If guys are driving a lot, resulting in 54% inside shooting when they shoot but also often resulting in getting hacked and shooting 80% from the line, that increases the efficiency of the inside game.

Whatever, I think these results, as have results from each of the past couple of years I think, dispute the charicature of an extreme outside-shooting team.

It would certainly help if we had some outside shooters who shot well from outside.

[Fort Minor]

It may just be me, but I haven't seen many people around here complain much about Mo's offense in awhile, aside from the fanatic Mo haters like xtitan, rilamann, and icat2000. So these people that should "light themselves on fire" are relatively few in number.

But anyways, considering we were going nowhere by midseason, I was absolutely fine with Mo and Redd getting less shots. We already knew what they could do, so it was time to see what Bogut could do if he got a lot of shots (which I agree that he got plenty of opportunities). There were some growing pains, but that is to be expected considering it was Bogut's first real chance for the offense to be so focused on him (see re: his trouble with handling double teams).

I'm not worried, and don't really want to see us go back to the guard orientated offense regardless of what these nu8mbers suggest, consideing the ceiling for such a system is low.

Also, do you happen to have the stats of outside shots taken by quarter compared to inside? I don't think I'd be going out on much of a limb by saying the % of outside shots in the 4th quarter is higher in comaprison to the first three quarters.

[Sigra]

Wow more threads about stats. Epi's philosophy is taking over this forum. Sad

[jerrod]

So:
Inside: 54.3%
3-Pointers: 34.5% = 51.2%.
Midrange: 40.4%

It still looks like the inside shots are the best to take.

i think that kinda misses the point, of course inside shots are the highest %, how could they not be. the point is that all the people calling it a chucking offense ignore the fact that we took the 2nd highest % of inside shots in the nba. the problem, is that we were the 2nd worst in making those inside shots, so while the % is slightly better than a midrange jumper, it's well below what it should be

[Epicurus]

Wow more threads about stats. Epi's philosophy is taking over this forum. Sad

Come on, Sigra, even you must agree that it is better than reading goat entrails,