Sometime in the last week or two, and I seriously don\u2019t remember when, I was watching a broadcast and it was mentioned that one of the participating teams tracks how well it shoots free throws in the last five minutes. I don\u2019t think I heard an explanation of why they were doing it. It could have been for something as innocuous as a blurb in the media notes or something like that. But if it was for anything more serious then it was a waste of time. To illustrate that, let\u2019s consider the three possible things that would be learned from such efforts.<\/p>\n
Scenario 1: Your team shoots better in clutch situations than in other situations.<\/strong> What do you do with this information? I guess you can tell your team, \u201cHey, guys, we really rise to the occasion when the game\u2019s on the line\u201d. There might be some utility in positive reinforcement.<\/p>\n Scenario 2: Your team shoots the same in clutch situations as in other situations.<\/strong> I suppose the reaction here would depend on your expectations. Do you think your team should be better than normal with the game on the line? If so, the response could be like the one outlined in Scenario 3.<\/p>\n Scenario 3: Your team shoots worse in clutch situations that other situations.<\/strong> Hmmm, maybe you could tell your team to concentrate harder. This is the most common prescription of media types. You know, when a player misses a free throw or two late in a game, and we get the \u201cyou have to make your free throws in this situation\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s all about concentration\u201d. As if the player at the line is unaware that it would have been better to make the free throws than miss them. So you tell your team to concentrate and then check back in two weeks and the results are no different, then what do you do? Tell them to concentrate harder? <\/p>\n As you might imagine, I\u2019m highly skeptical there is any reason to think that data from the last five minutes has any instructional value over a team or player\u2019s overall ability to make shots. I would just offer this advice to those who do \u2013 track stats for every<\/em> five-minute segment during a game and you\u2019ll get an idea of how much free-throw percentage (or any stat) can change over time for seemingly no reason at all. In this post, I\u2019ll look at this idea on the player level. But there\u2019s something to be learned from team level data as well, and I plan to get to that in a separate post.<\/p>\n For instance, here\u2019s Tony Wroten<\/strong>\u2019s breakdown from last season for each five-minute period of the game. (Note: To make each player\u2019s sample big enough, I\u2019m using data from the most-frequent free-throw shooters from last season.) Wroten was not a very good shooter, making 58.3% of his attempts overall.<\/p>\n [cl0-5 includes cases in the last five minutes only where the score was within 4 points.]<\/em><\/p>\n Wroten was not very good late whether the game was close or not. He also was not good early in the game when there was less on the line. Should Lorenzo Romar have told him to harness that feeling he has between the 10 and 15 minute mark? I guess you could concoct a theory where Wroten has a pressure threshold. He\u2019s good when the game is sort-of on the line, but when it\u2019s really crunch time, he cracks. But he also has a problem on the other end when there\u2019s not much on the line. So fix that, too. It really starts to sound silly when you view it in this way.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at another high-volume free-throw shooter, but one who was really good \u2013 C.J. McCollum<\/strong>. He made 81.1% of his attempts last season. <\/p>\n McCollum will max out all of the character categories come draft time so it\u2019s good to see he rises to the occasion in close-and-late situations. But why is he not so good with five to ten minutes left, yet really good in the last five minutes of the first half?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Jared Cunningham<\/strong> (73.7%), who really ran hot-and-cold depending on the time left.<\/p>\n Cunningham finished strong, although that was following a pretty bad effort with five-to-ten minutes to go. But he was concentrating pretty hard with between five and ten minutes left in the first half. If only Jared had just kept doing that the rest of the game, he might have been a really good shooter overall.<\/p>\n You\u2019re getting sleepy, so I\u2019ll end with Nate Wolters<\/strong>. Wolters went to the line 240 times and made an admirable 78.3% of his attempts.<\/p>\n Whoa, Nate, what\u2019s up? You appear to be mentally weak, unable to make free throws with the game on the line, and probably unable to carry out basic day-to-day tasks as well. Then again, what explains the fact that Wolters is so bad in the last five minutes but nearly automatic in the previous five minutes? He could carry the gene for Wroten Pressure Threshold Disease, or it could be that clutchness is crap. I vote for the latter*.<\/p>\n1st H FTM-FTA FT%\n15-20 14-28 .500\n10-15 14-29 .483\n 5-10 15-29 .517\n 0-5 21-33 .636\n2nd H\n15-20 15-25 .600\n10-15 23-30 .767\n 5-10 25-39 .641\n 0-5 27-51 .529\ncl0-5 8-15 .533\n\n<\/pre>\n
1st H FTM-FTA FT%\n15-20 8-11 .727\n10-15 15-19 .789\n 5-10 18-23 .783\n 0-5 35-41 .854\n2nd H\n15-20 18-22 .818\n10-15 25-31 .806\n 5-10 16-21 .762\n 0-5 61-73 .836\ncl0-5 18-19 .947\n\n<\/pre>\n
1st H FTM-FTA FT%\n15-20 6-7 .857\n10-15 14-19 .737\n 5-10 18-20 .900\n 0-5 16-23 .696\n2nd H\n15-20 9-17 .529\n10-15 38-48 .792\n 5-10 22-37 .595\n 0-5 70-92 .761\ncl0-5 30-45 .750\n\n<\/pre>\n
1st H FTM-FTA FT%\n15-20 7-9 .778\n10-15 15-21 .714\n 5-10 17-18 .944\n 0-5 24-31 .774\n2nd H\n15-20 16-18 .889\n10-15 35-42 .833\n 5-10 41-46 .891\n 0-5 45-66 .682\ncl0-5 8-17 .471\n\n<\/pre>\n