NBA again!

“What goes around comes around!”

This is a French saying that goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” I thought of this while watching the first two nights of the new NBA season last week, the start of the 2006-2007 season. I was a bit naively hoping to see better shots. With everything so new, and new team arrangements, new rookies, changing coaches, I thought maybe another summer of shooting practice could improve the level of shooting in the league.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!

NEW SEASON… THE SAME LOST TIMES!

Missed shots and missed free throws were as apparent as ever. Most of the players obviously hadn’t spent time in the offseason looking for pitching help. Does anyone care more?

I made a free throw and 3-point shot spreadsheet for each of the 30 teams that played in the first 15 games of the year. He was quite revealing. (I wish they had a stat for non-3 shots taken from, say, 5 feet or more. That would really surprise people. Including dunks, layups, and field goals with outside field goals confuses the issue.) Take away the easy ones and the Bigs, and the League, would be pretty embarrassed by their outside shooting stats.)

71.7% FROM THE LINE, 31.5% BY 3’S

Overall, in these 15 games, teams averaged 71.7% from the line and 31.5% from the 3-point arc.

FREE THROW 71.7%:

On free throws, the team’s performance went from a low of 50% (Cleveland was 15 of 30 in a win, if you can believe it, against the Wizards) to 92% (Philadelphia was 23 of 25 against Atlanta, which shot a ingenious 19 for 22 themselves, 86.4%).

I don’t know how the 71.7% ranks compared to previous years, but it’s pretty poor in my opinion. For players as gifted as these guys, who play as much as they play, going less than 3-for-4 is disappointing, to say the least. Perhaps these days 72% is considered “pretty good”, but in the old days it would be considered mediocre. Broken down further, 13 teams shot at 70% or less, and 5 teams shot at 60% or less.

Here are the scores for the worst 13 performances of the line:

13 by 22

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