Stat question

Cesar Crespo

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Dec 22, 2002
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Going off stats alone, what would be the best indicator of a player being able to create his own shot? Is it percentage of his shots assisted, with the lower number being better? Any others?
 

JakeRae

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Going off stats alone, what would be the best indicator of a player being able to create his own shot? Is it percentage of his shots assisted, with the lower number being better? Any others?
I think this would be wrong. This would make players who are good at scoring off ball look worse at self-creation. A metric that looked to a combination of unassisted usage and unassisted efficiency would probably be the way to go.
 

Devizier

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FT attempts is the first thing I think of
Makes a lot of sense, but it's a list dominated by bigs. Either by virtue of efficient low post scoring (and getting fouled in the process) or just being the target of hacking. Notably, in NBA history Reggie Evans has the highest FTr (free throw attempts per field goal attempts). Dwight Howard is number two, followed by former Magic sixth man Donald Royal (a legit shot creator).

Perhaps a decent proxy is FGA per team possession. That doesn't indicate who is a good shot creator per se, but those guys tend to be the ones taking the most shots on their respective teams.

Number one is Jordan, followed by Freeman Williams, Wilkins, Bryant, Anthony, Iverson, and Westbrook. Seems to pass the eye test.
 

Cellar-Door

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No one stat, but in looking at college guys I know a lot of people in addition to just tape scouting use FTA, Unassisted FGA at/near rim and unassisted FG% at the rim to see who is beating their man or the zone off the dribble consistently.
 

slamminsammya

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I feel like you can really overthink this one. I would go with raw FGA - maybe adjusted for pace. The issue I might see with FGA per possession is that you are rewarding guys who are maybe chuckers but dont really create good shots, hence if you shoot a lot but arent good at it you will get benched. On the other han someone who is having to create a lot on their own will stay on the court.
 

Sam Ray Not

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Usage and efficiency are the two most basic measures of a player's scoring prowess, independent of context. You could try to further parse that into unassisted v. assisted points (etc.) to gauge a player's "ability to create one's own shot," but then (as JakeRae notes) you ignore the important ability to create good shots for one's team by moving well off-ball, and ultimately risk valorizing bad basketball.
 

JakeRae

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Usage and efficiency are the two most basic measures of a player's scoring prowess, independent of context. You could try to further parse that into unassisted v. assisted points (etc.) to gauge a player's "ability to create one's own shot," but then (as JakeRae notes) you ignore the important ability to create good shots for one's team by moving well off-ball, and ultimately risk valorizing bad basketball.
That actually wasn't my point. I mean, you do, but that's part of the point. Shot creation ability isn't a proxy for overall offensive but might be an independently useful measurement. The first piece of my proposed measurement is pretty easy to access. But, I don't think anyone tracks unassisted efficiency, which would be really important. You don't just want guys who shoot or score a lot unassisted, you want guys who get themselves good shots and convert them. But, to track that, you'd need somewhere that tracks "assisted" misses so you could break out efficiency on both fronts. Then you'd just need to assign a weighting, which is both the easy and hard part. But, I think the hard part is knowing which misses come from shots that would be assisted and which come from self-created shots.