Need assistance with explaining % of ftm out of pts made

[bsped]

For some reason I just do not think Kevin Durant is as good as the national media says he is. I do not think he is overrated, but I also think he gets a little help from the league.

As of 1/27/14, the correlation of fg% to ft% is -.48 (that is pretty significant even though I know correlation is not causation). KD is at 88% ft% and 51% fg%. 28% of his points come from free throws (5th highest % in the league amongst the top 20 scorers this year, side note: James Harden is at 31% and leads the league within the top 20 scorers currently) . I'm pretty sure players in the NBA are aware of this, yet it feels like KD gets to the line all time.

I am more than willing to be dissuaded from thinking KD is overrated. But looking at the numbers makes me feel something is off. Please talk me down from this conspiracy ledge if you can.

[Mike G]

... I just do not think Kevin Durant is as good as the national media says he is. I do not think he is overrated, ..

I guess I may not know what "overrated" means.
Some guys get to the line more than others. It doesn't require any kind of conspiracy to see that some players get fouled more frequently. It may be that they are bad FT shooters, especially relative to their inside scoring ability -- Dwight, Drummond, Bogut -- so it's a tactic used by the opponent.

But Durant, Harden, Griffin, LeBron and such are scorers in motion, and they're often double teamed while driving to the basket. This is where they get their FT. If you don't try to stop them, they'll score. If you do try to stop them, you often foul them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9bXSEzNc_s

[v-zero]

KD did and does make excellent use of the rip-through rule before and after the change to stop it being a shooting foul. Obviously in the penalty his rip-throughs get him to the line still, which probably helps him a bit.

[bsped]

@MikeG That is what I figured. I guess I need to look at where KD is at when fouls are called on hi

But someone who gets 1/4 of their total points from the ft line, just makes me wonder if us non-Thuder fans have to deal with league bias.

I am still bitter from the "goaltending" call a few years back that went in KD's favor and thus lead to the Blazers collapsing.

[Mike G]

Durant is perhaps not that unusual in his % of points from FT.
Basketball-reference.com now furnishes 'FT rate', shown as FTr
= FTA/FGA
This is more a measure of how often a player is fouled, relative to his FGA. Some bad FT shooters rank high in this.

I just searched for the 100 most FT (made) per 36 minutes in a season and then looked up all players in that list; I omitted 3 players whose FTr peaked before the shot clock and 3 more who were mostly or entirely in the ABA.
http://bkref.com/tiny/9eVUk

Ranked by age of peak FTr, I've listed career FT/36, FTr for career and at age 25 (Durant's current age), peak FTr and age of that peak, and final season FTr.
Only seasons with at least 1000 minutes are considered for Peak and Last values.
Current players (in parentheses) show this year as their Last year, regardless of minutes.

Code: Select all

FTA/FGA  FT/36  Career  Age25  Peak  AgePk  Last
Carmelo    6.2   .393   .407  (.466   20   .330)
Jordan     6.4   .358   .442   .459   21   .212
D Harris   4.6   .460   .582  (.583   22   .348)
Amar'e     5.9   .509   .571  (.595   22   .397)
Wade       6.3   .472   .556  (.578   23   .313)

B King     4.9   .360   .382   .460   23   .321
Sears      5.9   .542   .587   .591   23   .553
Barry      6.0   .301   .447   .592   24   .198
Arenas     5.4   .405   .464   .479   24   .208
Free       6.3   .438   .523   .656   24   .339

Barkley    5.8   .554   .661   .741   24   .532
Baylor     6.1   .366   .432   .462   24   .340
Howell     5.6   .458   .513   .617   24   .459
Durant     6.9   .437   .502  (.523   24   .502)
Kev Martin 6.1   .487   .650  (.650   25   .323)

Stackhouse 5.5   .429   .524   .524   25   .281
D Thompson 6.2   .433   .543   .543   25   .411
Kobe       6.3   .389   .452  (.502   26   .288)
Nowitzki   5.5   .377   .323  (.490   26   .298)
Pettit     7.3   .481   .492   .536   26   .439

FTA/FGA  FT/36  Career  Age25  Peak  AgePk  Last
West       7.0   .462   .459   .564   27   .326
Foust      5.4   .512   .517   .676   27   .411
Bing       4.8   .360   .425   .451   27   .315
Maggette   7.1   .624   .666   .783   27   .581
Wilkins    5.7   .345   .319   .415   27   .367

Pierce     5.7   .452   .473  (.555   28   .408)
Yardley    6.1   .454   .417   .502   28   .388
J Drew     7.1   .495   .547   .584   28   .485
Moses      6.6   .572   .520   .704   29   .543
Oscar      6.3   .468   .539   .568   30   .329

Archibald  5.4   .456   .429   .548   31   .362
Dantley    7.2   .552   .516   .663   31   .525
Issel      5.7   .398   .337   .561   32   .403
Iverson    6.1   .410   .397   .512   32   .416
Wilt       4.6   .505   .431   .780   32   .776

D Robinson 6.3   .577   .569   .689   33   .510
Mailman    6.4   .503   .589   .602   35   .563
Mourning   5.6   .604   .662   .725   36   .725

.averages        .458   .496   .577  26.7  .409

Smaller/perimeter players tend to peak earlier; bigs later. Notable exceptions among both, but it seems equally true throughout history.
Durant's career (so far) FTr is below the avg of these 38 players. His peak (so far) year is well below the avg.

[bsped]

Awesome! Thanks for doing that. I guess I just have to direct my anger to the Blazer's front office for not drafting KD.

I find the FTr stat really interesting and was always something I kept my eye on. Especially with OKC being in the top 10 for the past 5 years. But I never got around you exploring historical data that much. I did go back the past 10 years to look at the top 20 scorers in the league to see how many of their points came from the FTs. KD seems to be in the higher side of the average. It seems FTr is a better stat for this question.

Seriously, thanks for doing this.