Having fun with Data — NBA Edition
As a NBA fan (Go Lakers) I always admired those players that in very crucial moments and out of nowhere they will go andscore a long distance shot just to tie the game of to even win it. The likes of Robert Horry , Dwayne Wade or Kobe Bryant comes to mind.
But then, there was the games when the score was tight (< 5 points) and then a player had to make the same crucial play but from the uncontested line.
I was wondering if the same names that I was familiar already as ‘clutch’ player, had the same results from the free throw. It was different condition, there is no adrenaline pumping, no play could be planned, just the player, the ball, the basket and the shot clock.
Lucky for me, thanks to Sebastian Mantey, he created a dataset for free-throws attempts from the 2006–2016 season. So I decided to play with this and see if I could answer my question.
Basic exploration
The first exploratory question was, overall, who goes to the line the most?. The name I’m familiar with were in the list, but a bit surprising was that LBJ and KD shot almost six thousands free throws in that period. The closest one was Kobe Bryant with five thousand shots. 😅
Effectiveness per quarter (a.k.a. FT%)
The next questions was, who , overall, was the best free-throw shooter? Basically the data confirm what I already knew:
Steve Nash was really.. really good free-throw shooter. But interesting enough, he was the most consistent shooter on all quarters.
And then.. who was the best free-throw shooter in close games?
A: James Posey.
When games with a difference of 5 points or less, Posey when to the line 519 times between 2006–2016, and he had then a perfect percentage score. 💯
I remember Posey was a great defender and a effective overall shooter. I just didn’t expect he was that letal from the free-throw line.
If you want to take a look, here it is the full version of the dashboard I built for this analysis. Leave any comment if there is anything else you would like to see next.
