Saturday, March 19, 2011

How Important Is Shot-Making to the Hawks' Success?

Very important.

Perusing Hoopdata this evening, I noticed that the Hawks have had a lower eFG% than their opponents in each of their last 25 losses and in 27 of their 30 losses this season. The three exceptions all came prior to Thanksgiving: at Dallas, in the home loss to Utah, and in the first visit to Orlando.

The Hawks have had a higher eFG% than their opponents in 31 of their 39 wins.

So, when the Hawks shoot better than their opponents this season, they're 31-3. When they shoot worse than their opponents, they're 8-27. In 17 of the last 18 Atlanta Hawks games (the exception being the come-from-behind win against the Bulls), the team that shot better won the game.

2 comments:

Bronnt said...

True, but I'm curious how different this is from the average team-eFG% is the most important of the four factors. For example, I did a quick look at Boston-in all but 5 of their wins, they've had the higher eFG%. They've also had the same (twice) or higher eFG% in 6 of their 19 losses, so I'm not sure what that says.

More significant would be to find the correlation between the Hawks' eFG% outside of about 10 feet with their winning percentage. Again, probably going to see similarities for all NBA teams, but I'd bet the Hawks rely much more heavily on effective jumpshooting, and especially long 2 pointers, than almost any other team-probably don't win many games where they're below 40% from that range.

Maybe something I could try to put together with Excel.

Bret LaGree said...

Bronn --

I briefly looked at the import of shot location but, just looking at Friday night's game, I couldn't immediately figure out what to do about the impact of garbage time.

If my notes are right, the Hawks made 7 of 13 shots outside of 16 feet once the game was decided.

As for league averages, that's step two, the completion of which is TBD.