Moses Malone Z-Bound & Scoring Efficiency

[Proxy]

I've heard people talk about how Moses occssionally missed a few easy shot attempts intentionally in order to grab offensive rebounds and put them back up.

This had me wondering, what would his scoring efficiency look like if those self-follow ups were all counted as a single shot attempt? (Like honestly I think they should)

I remember Elgee mentioned these types of shot attempts on his Zion video and how his efficiency looks slightly better when doing this, but for someone like Moses I imagine the numbers would also have an increase due to the nature of his game.

Has anyone tracked these? Are there any estimations/calculations made on the board for Moses or other historic players yet?

[70sFan]

I tracked 38 1979-83 Moses games and I calculated that he put back around 4.3% of his shots, which gives us around 0.8 additional FGA per game for that span. If we exclude these FGAs from Moses totals, his efficiency would look this way:

1979-83 Moses: 26.8 ppg on 58.0 TS%
With adjustment: 26.8 ppg on 60.1 TS%

The difference isn't drastic, but it's noticeable.

By the way, I also tracked Moses scoring data:

Total (38 games): 27.0 ppg, 51.5 FG%, 71.5 FT%, 56.6 TS%

Post ups: 12.8 ppg on 52.4 TS%
Putbacks: 6.4 ppg on 59.2 TS%
Cuts and garbage points: 3.2 ppg on 71.6 TS%
Transition: 2.7 ppg on 81.7 TS%
Midrange ISO game: 1.0 ppg on 43.5 TS%
Driving: 0.7 ppg on 46.4 TS%
P&R Game: 0.3 ppg on 49.4 TS%
Catch and Shoot: 0.2 ppg on 23.0 TS%

So Moses scored around 6-7 ppg on offensive rebounds.

[penbeast0]

Yes, but the great majority of those are legit offensive rebounding putbacks, of which Moses is the arguable GOAT. I've seen players pad their rebounding stats by putting it off the glass to themselves (George McGinnis is the one I remember) but with later career Moses, it seemed he just didn't finish as well but still rebounded strongly so he followed a lot of his own misses but I don't remember seeing him do it intentionally (not that I've seen even 5% of Moses's games as a pro despite watching a lot of basketball in that era).

[DQuinn1575]

Yes, but the great majority of those are legit offensive rebounding putbacks, of which Moses is the arguable GOAT. I've seen players pad their rebounding stats by putting it off the glass to themselves (George McGinnis is the one I remember) but with later career Moses, it seemed he just didn't finish as well but still rebounded strongly so he followed a lot of his own misses but I don't remember seeing him do it intentionally (not that I've seen even 5% of Moses's games as a pro despite watching a lot of basketball in that era).

There's some basic reasoning that real good offensive rebounders used to do - made up numbers but
Ill try a 50% shot try on a putback if Im in position and think I have a 60% chance of getting the board, rather than make 2 moves and get a 60% chance with a 30% chance of getting the board.

So it wasn't intentionally missing, but it was maybe even not taking the very best shot, but still maximizing your chances to score on the possession.

[DQuinn1575]

I tracked 38 1979-83 Moses games and I calculated that he put back around 4.3% of his shots, which gives us around 0.8 additional FGA per game for that span. If we exclude these FGAs from Moses totals, his efficiency would look this way:

1979-83 Moses: 26.8 ppg on 58.0 TS%
With adjustment: 26.8 ppg on 60.1 TS%

The difference isn't drastic, but it's noticeable.

By the way, I also tracked Moses scoring data:

Total (38 games): 27.0 ppg, 51.5 FG%, 71.5 FT%, 56.6 TS%

Post ups: 12.8 ppg on 52.4 TS%
Putbacks: 6.4 ppg on 59.2 TS%
Cuts and garbage points: 3.2 ppg on 71.6 TS%
Transition: 2.7 ppg on 81.7 TS%
Midrange ISO game: 1.0 ppg on 43.5 TS%
Driving: 0.7 ppg on 46.4 TS%
P&R Game: 0.3 ppg on 49.4 TS%
Catch and Shoot: 0.2 ppg on 23.0 TS%

So Moses scored around 6-7 ppg on offensive rebounds.

Great stuff, a few things (if you have them):
1. How many off rebounds (or total rebounds) did he get these games? Wondering if he scored 6.4 ppg on x offreb per game.
2 Harder, and you probably dont have - any idea how often he shot off his off reb versus passing out of the off reb?
3. Yes Im asking a lot - a little unsure of the 4.3% number - would have thought that would be higher - so if he took 23 shots in a game, made 12, did he get 1 off rebound (1 out of 23 ~ 4.3%) of those? I would think it would be higher, but you have the data, so wondering what the math is of the 4.3%

Thanks - again stuff like this is really interesting (at least to me)

[70sFan]

Great stuff, a few things (if you have them):
1. How many off rebounds (or total rebounds) did he get these games? Wondering if he scored 6.4 ppg on x offreb per game.

He averaged 5.9 offensive rebounds in games I watched. He averaged 4.4 FGA and 2.3 FTA on putbacks.

2 Harder, and you probably dont have - any idea how often he shot off his off reb versus passing out of the off reb?

Well, this one is harder. It seems that he attempted a shot or drew shooting foul in around 80% of his offensive rebounding situations. I didn't track how often he turned the ball over after offensive rebound though, so it's likely that he passed out of the offensive rebound less often than 20% of the time.

Keep in mind that some of these offensive rebounds were tips and putbacks, he wasn't always in possession of the ball during rebound.

3. Yes Im asking a lot - a little unsure of the 4.3% number - would have thought that would be higher - so if he took 23 shots in a game, made 12, did he get 1 off rebound (1 out of 23 ~ 4.3%) of those? I would think it would be higher, but you have the data, so wondering what the math is of the 4.3%

The math behind it is simple - I tracked 699 Moses FGA, 30 of them were rebounded by himself (some of games are incomplete unfortunately).

30/699 = 0.043

Of course it's possible that the number is slighlty higher - I have 2 incomplete Moses games from 1982 that I couldn't include to my evalutation due to very strong bias towards made field goals. In these 4 games, he averaged 2 putbacks after missed shots, which would increase the average up to 4.5%, but the difference wouldn't be massive.

I think that Moses didn't rebound much more than one of his shots per game on average. That's still notable number, higher than famous Zion Williamson example. Of course my sample of size is still very small, so you should take my numbers with a grain of salt.

Thanks - again stuff like this is really interesting (at least to me)

No problem! I will do Kareem and Hakeem next, then I will have to finish Shaq at some point (still have a lot of 2001 games to track).

[DQuinn1575]

Great stuff, a few things (if you have them):
1. How many off rebounds (or total rebounds) did he get these games? Wondering if he scored 6.4 ppg on x offreb per game.

He averaged 5.9 offensive rebounds in games I watched. He averaged 4.4 FGA and 2.3 FTA on putbacks.

2 Harder, and you probably dont have - any idea how often he shot off his off reb versus passing out of the off reb?

Well, this one is harder. It seems that he attempted a shot or drew shooting foul in around 80% of his offensive rebounding situations. I didn't track how often he turned the ball over after offensive rebound though, so it's likely that he passed out of the offensive rebound less often than 20% of the time.

Keep in mind that some of these offensive rebounds were tips and putbacks, he wasn't always in possession of the ball during rebound.

3. Yes Im asking a lot - a little unsure of the 4.3% number - would have thought that would be higher - so if he took 23 shots in a game, made 12, did he get 1 off rebound (1 out of 23 ~ 4.3%) of those? I would think it would be higher, but you have the data, so wondering what the math is of the 4.3%

The math behind it is simple - I tracked 699 Moses FGA, 30 of them were rebounded by himself (some of games are incomplete unfortunately).

30/699 = 0.043

Of course it's possible that the number is slighlty higher - I have 2 incomplete Moses games from 1982 that I couldn't include to my evalutation due to very strong bias towards made field goals. In these 4 games, he averaged 2 putbacks after missed shots, which would increase the average up to 4.5%, but the difference wouldn't be massive.

I think that Moses didn't rebound much more than one of his shots per game on average. That's still notable number, higher than famous Zion Williamson example. Of course my sample of size is still very small, so you should take my numbers with a grain of salt.

Thanks - again stuff like this is really interesting (at least to me)

No problem! I will do Kareem and Hakeem next, then I will have to finish Shaq at some point (still have a lot of 2001 games to track).

Again thanks a lot.
Really surprised that Moses got less than 1 rebound a game off is own shot. Based on what people think/remember would have thought it was a fair amount higher.

Other point on Moses is that he got almost 25% of his scoring from offensive boards, you talk about efficiency, those are points he is generating basically on his own. It's also one of the reason his assists are SO low - yes he wasnt a good passer, but a lot of times it wasnt that he passed the ball and shot, he got the rebound in good scoring position and shot.

[70sFan]

Great stuff, a few things (if you have them):
1. How many off rebounds (or total rebounds) did he get these games? Wondering if he scored 6.4 ppg on x offreb per game.

He averaged 5.9 offensive rebounds in games I watched. He averaged 4.4 FGA and 2.3 FTA on putbacks.

2 Harder, and you probably dont have - any idea how often he shot off his off reb versus passing out of the off reb?

Well, this one is harder. It seems that he attempted a shot or drew shooting foul in around 80% of his offensive rebounding situations. I didn't track how often he turned the ball over after offensive rebound though, so it's likely that he passed out of the offensive rebound less often than 20% of the time.

Keep in mind that some of these offensive rebounds were tips and putbacks, he wasn't always in possession of the ball during rebound.

3. Yes Im asking a lot - a little unsure of the 4.3% number - would have thought that would be higher - so if he took 23 shots in a game, made 12, did he get 1 off rebound (1 out of 23 ~ 4.3%) of those? I would think it would be higher, but you have the data, so wondering what the math is of the 4.3%

The math behind it is simple - I tracked 699 Moses FGA, 30 of them were rebounded by himself (some of games are incomplete unfortunately).

30/699 = 0.043

Of course it's possible that the number is slighlty higher - I have 2 incomplete Moses games from 1982 that I couldn't include to my evalutation due to very strong bias towards made field goals. In these 4 games, he averaged 2 putbacks after missed shots, which would increase the average up to 4.5%, but the difference wouldn't be massive.

I think that Moses didn't rebound much more than one of his shots per game on average. That's still notable number, higher than famous Zion Williamson example. Of course my sample of size is still very small, so you should take my numbers with a grain of salt.

Thanks - again stuff like this is really interesting (at least to me)

No problem! I will do Kareem and Hakeem next, then I will have to finish Shaq at some point (still have a lot of 2001 games to track).

Again thanks a lot.
Really surprised that Moses got less than 1 rebound a game off is own shot. Based on what people think/remember would have thought it was a fair amount higher.

Other point on Moses is that he got almost 25% of his scoring from offensive boards, you talk about efficiency, those are points he is generating basically on his own. It's also one of the reason his assists are SO low - yes he wasnt a good passer, but a lot of times it wasnt that he passed the ball and shot, he got the rebound in good scoring position and shot.

Actually, I realized that I got my calculations wrong - I didn't include shooting fouls drawn after own misses. With the inclusion of them, Moses actually rebounded 5.4% of his shots. Not a huge difference, but notable nonetheless.

In my sample, Moses averaged 27.0 ppg on 19.7 FGA, so he rebounded around 1.1 FGA per game on average. Adjusting for that, Moses scoring efficiency rises from 56.7 TS% to 59.3 TS%, which is quite notable difference.