Are We Relying Too Heavily On "The Lottery"?

[Kedsy]

Also, corner threes are as efficient as dunks...

The corner three in the NBA is shorter than elsewhere, so that might explain the extra efficiency. Probably wouldn't carry over to college, where I believe the distance is constant.

[ice-9]

Nice work uh_no!

One thing to emphasize is that standard deviation isn't the best metric to measure the "risk" of 2-pointers vs. 3-pointers -- for that, skew is a better metric. For example, if playing against a team who can't stop dribble penetration and/or who can't alter shots in the post, we'd have a very high 2-point percentage that would actually increase standard deviation. Yet that's an argument for more 2-pointers than 3-pointers!

Ultimately I personally believe if you have good 3-point shooters that you should utilize them, but having a balance is best. I.e. maximizing the expected value of a shot no matter where you are on the floor. Good outside shooting opens up the inside, and good interior play opens up the outside.

We are a much, much better team when the Plumlees were scoring inside like they did that one stretch against UNC in the second half. The Plumlees were clearly scoring with an ability that isn't about "playing averages," but about bullying their way to the basket for a easy buckets. That's the kind of 2-point scoring we need more of. It'll force the opposing team to double our bigs which will open up our perimeter players for higher percentage shots.

I suspect games when we have bad 3-point shooting nights are caused more by good defence than mere bad luck. In those games, we need our inside players to command more attention from the defence.

[ACCBBallFan]

Throatybeard makes a valid point. I'll use the two big guys I consider the Gold Standard as the example.

Bill Walton: 65.1%
Lew Alcindor: 63.9%

Walton scored 1767 points in his career at UCLA with 273 coming on Free Throws (15.4%), while Alcindor scored 2325 points with 439 (18.8%) coming via the Free Throw. This season, Dawkins, a 42.2% 3PT shooter has scored 277 points including 34 on Free Throws (12.2%).

So the percentage of points scored via free throws doesn't appear that large to me so it appears Duke is better off attempting 3 PT FGs and securing the bonus point from the field, especially considering Miles and Mason are not Lew and Bill.

(And yes, I realize I'm comparing career numbers to numbers from a partial season but that's okay because we ain't doing rocket science here we are discussing basketball.)

When you adjust for getting 3 points versus just 2, that 63% FG% is equivalent to 42% from 3 land.

It still boils down to greater than 50% from 2 or greater than 33% from 3 is the low water mark.