Post by eric on Mar 14, 2016 11:16:43 GMT -6
I decided to look into this more. b-r has a shot finder going back to the 2001 season, so I took every player-season with at least 150 two point attempts from 16+ feet and 150 free throw attempts and looked for seasons where a player was significantly (one standard deviation) above the two point average for that season (to control for different defensive rules, levels of competition, etc.). When I did that I found 177 player-seasons, and as a check to see if this method correctly identifies good shooters here are the eleven players with the most such seasons:
Feels like it's pretty accurate. Next I looked for how many such seasons were obtained by a player with 76% or worse free throw shooting. (Note that the average for this entire sample was 80%.) There were 23 such player-seasons, broken down as follows:
14 guys who only had one season of good shooting and so probably weren't actually good shooters.
2 guys who had eight seasons of good shooting and so probably just had one bad year at the line.
4 guys who had two or three seasons of good shooting and so are in a gray area.
Mark Blount, who had three seasons of good shooting, all of which were <76% free throw shooting, and was the only player to have more than one of the 23.
For his career Mark shot 46% from long 2 and 72% from the line, and so he is certainly a good shooter from the floor and well below average from the line. However, Mark was a 7' center who was assisted on 95% of his range shots, which was probably not the case for Isiah.
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All told it looks really unlikely to me that Isiah Thomas was a great or even good shooter from range. I suspect he was merely good enough to keep defenses honest.
12 Dirk Nowitzki
8 David West
8 Jason Terry
8 Kevin Garnett
7 Steve Nash
6 Chris Bosh
5 Chris Paul
4 Allan Houston
4 Brad Miller
4 Ray Allen
4 Sam CassellFeels like it's pretty accurate. Next I looked for how many such seasons were obtained by a player with 76% or worse free throw shooting. (Note that the average for this entire sample was 80%.) There were 23 such player-seasons, broken down as follows:
14 guys who only had one season of good shooting and so probably weren't actually good shooters.
2 guys who had eight seasons of good shooting and so probably just had one bad year at the line.
4 guys who had two or three seasons of good shooting and so are in a gray area.
Mark Blount, who had three seasons of good shooting, all of which were <76% free throw shooting, and was the only player to have more than one of the 23.
For his career Mark shot 46% from long 2 and 72% from the line, and so he is certainly a good shooter from the floor and well below average from the line. However, Mark was a 7' center who was assisted on 95% of his range shots, which was probably not the case for Isiah.
.
All told it looks really unlikely to me that Isiah Thomas was a great or even good shooter from range. I suspect he was merely good enough to keep defenses honest.
