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LOL, I know it's an absolute worthless stat, but I'm curious what a ranking would look like for opponent's free throw percentage. Anyone have a link?

Something like this? http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... ponent::12

Bingo. If I'm reading that right, the Thunder "allow" their opponents to shoot 77.8% from the free throw line while the Heat "hold" their opponents to 72%? Absolutely no correlation to anything, was just curious if there by chance might have been.

john2jer wrote:Bingo. If I'm reading that right, the Thunder "allow" their opponents to shoot 77.8% from the free throw line while the Heat "hold" their opponents to 72%? Absolutely no correlation to anything, was just curious if there by chance might have been.

Well, it can be interpreted that the Heat are fouling the "right" players while the Thunder the "wrong" players. To confirm that we would need to look at the typical averages of the players the Heat and the Thunder are sending to the line.

Yeah, you could take it to that. I just meant you don't see the bad teams all towards the top of that list and the good teams all towards the bottom. It's just a jumbled mix. Good and bad on both ends.

john2jer wrote:Yeah, you could take it to that. I just meant you don't see the bad teams all towards the top of that list and the good teams all towards the bottom. It's just a jumbled mix. Good and bad on both ends.

Well, a regression of the data from 2004/05 to 2011/12 shows a significant correlation ( R = 0.37) between opponents FT% and DRtg. Better defensive teams are "holding" their opponents in average to lower FT%. If that is just related to luck or a skill to foul the right players, no idea, but I suspect the latter.

Hardness of fouls might also be a (small) factor, providing a small penalty to the fouled player.

mysticbb wrote:

john2jer wrote:Yeah, you could take it to that. I just meant you don't see the bad teams all towards the top of that list and the good teams all towards the bottom. It's just a jumbled mix. Good and bad on both ends.

Well, a regression of the data from 2004/05 to 2011/12 shows a significant correlation ( R = 0.37) between opponents FT% and DRtg. Better defensive teams are "holding" their opponents in average to lower FT%. If that is just related to luck or a skill to foul the right players, no idea, but I suspect the latter.

Bingo - my guess would be better defensive teams avoid fouling great free throw shooters.

john2jer wrote:Yeah, you could take it to that. I just meant you don't see the bad teams all towards the top of that list and the good teams all towards the bottom. It's just a jumbled mix. Good and bad on both ends.

Well, fundamentally, certain types of players are better free throw shooters than others. Big man are bad free throw shooters, and hence if you disproportionately foul big men, you would expect to look good by this metric.

Whether or not this means a team is actually doing something right is completely up for debate, but the data itself is without question meaningful as an indicator of team defensive trends in the same way that analysis of the types of shots allowed are meaningful.

Let me expound because Doc is going into more detail - fouling is part of defense. When Dwyane Wade took 831 free throws in the 06 Finals, most of it was due to the defense's inability to stay in front of him. Good defenses won't commit bad fouls -- fouls usually away from the hoop, against good shooting guards (either on the dribble -- yikes -- or on their jumper). They will guard the rim area well usually, and that means rotating well, even if it means to foul on high percentage shots near the hoop.

This could be tested with some creative data analysis...namely, are the Chauncey Billups of the world shooting fewer free throws against elite defenses while Ben Wallace is taking more?

Yu could definitely test this in detail, but my hunch is that controlling for the primary variables, the difference is pretty miniscule.

St dev of opp FT% is .0134. Avg opp team FT% is .7513. +/- 1 st dev from average is .982x to 1.018x of league avg team opp FT%. That's pretty tiny.

Compare that to the tendency of teams to put opponents on the line: FTA/FGA. +/- 1 st dev is 0.881x to 1.119x of the league avg opp FTA/FGA ratio. The st dev itself is roughly 2.5x bigger but as a % of avg rates it is about 6 times bigger than FT% variation.

Whatever advantage a team gets from knowing who to foul is pretty inconsequential compared to their ability not to put people on the line at all. It's so small that without actually crunching the #s, it's probably perfectly reasonable to assume that most of the variance is due to the unbalanced schedule in the league, ie, teams that play good FT shooting teams more often probably yield a higher opp FT% than those that don't.

If someone were to isolate all of the noise (schedule opp FT% and home-road splits for subtle changes in FT shooting environment), the difference between the 4th best and 4th worst team in the league might result in a 0.25 or so pt/game difference.

Could a factor be that good teams are going to be on the right side of the "Icing the game at the FT line" situation more often, assuming players with good FT% are more likely to be passed the ball at that point? (And naturally, good teams are more likely to find the better FT shooters and defend against it better on the other tend, tieing into the fouling the right players factor)

Ask and ye shall receive (I was already working on this, anyway). 2.5-yr Adjusted FT% allowed (mean is 74.8%):

Players with >3000 possessions played.



Does this mean anything? Probably not much. More important would be adjusted free throw rate.