A Small Percentage of Help: The Best and Worst Shooters in the NBA

Categorized as: Author: Patrick, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Basketball Strategy
Posted on: January 31st, 2009

By this point in the regular season, you know where you’re fantasy team stands. You know its strengths and weaknesses, the categories your strong in and weak, and for the most part, the type of performance you can expect from most players here on out.

The good news is that there is still plenty of time left in the season to improve your team to make a run or lock up a playoff spot. And In my opinion, the quickest way to improve your team (other than to rip off someone off in a trade – which I would advise if that is an option) is to improve your team’s percentages. Why?

1. People still don’t really understand percentages: Points are easy. Kobe scores a lot of them, Shawn Marion doesn’t. The other counting stats are similar. If you need blocks, get a guy who does a lot of that. But percentages are a little more confusing because it is more than just a number. A guy shoots 85% from the line. But how many shots does he average? Will he hurt your FG% as much as he helps your FT%?

2. Percentages are injury proof: Well, more than counting stats anyway. If your team gets decimated by injuries and you lose your top 3 draft picks, your team is probably going to tank points or rebounds. But your percentages aren’t necessarily hurt because percentages aren’t a counting stat. There are players up and down the value spectrum who can shoot well, while the same can’t be said of other stats (well, I guess the same can be said of threes).

So, to get a grasp on how players affect a fantasy team’s percentages, I used our player rater to rank the top 300 players in the league in terms of only their combined FG% and FT% up to this point in the season. It tells us, without taking into account anything other than those 2 shooting stats, which guys are going to help your team’s percentages the most and which ones are going to hurt them the most. For the full list of players ranked by their combined FG/FT percentages, check this out.

Here are the top 20 shooters in the league based on how they would help the average fantasy team (with FG% and FT% in parenthesis):

1. Yao Ming (54%/87%)
2. Dirk Nowitzki (48%/92%)
3. Amare Stoudemire (54%/83%)
4. Chris Paul (50%/87%)
5. Ray Allen (50%/94%)
6. Jose Calderon (50%/100%)
7. Pau Gasol (56%/78%)
8. David Lee (57%/76%)
9. Kevin Garnett (52%/85%)
10. David West (47%/90%)
11. Chris Kaman (57%/75%)
12. Carlos Boozer (56%/73%)
13. Nene Hilario (60%/74%)
14. Kobe Bryant (47%/86%)
15. Jameer Nelson (51%/88%)
16. Steve Nash (48%/94%)
17. Kevin Durant (47%/86%)
18. Zydrunas Ilgauskas (52%/84%)
19. Carl Landry (56%/82%)
20. Chris Bosh (50%/80%)

For all the crap he gets being an injury risk, Yao Ming is truly the king of efficient shooting. Not only does he shoot 54% from the field and 87% from the line, he also takes an above average 13 shots from the field and 6.4 from the line on average.

Not surprising, you’ll see a lot of big men on a list like this. They have the fortune of taking a lot of high percentage shots from the field. The few that can also become competent from the free throw line are guys you can anchor your team’s percentages around. I’m guessing the majority of fantasy teams with Ming are doing decent in the percentages department.

I haven’t done any actual analysis to test this, but Jameer Nelson HAS to be the most improved shooter so far this year, right? Call it a fluke, but his field goal shooting has increased by almost 4% while his free throw shooting has gone from 83% to 88% compared to last season.

And here are the 10 guys who are going to hurt your percentages the most based on what they’ve done this season, led off (of course) by the Prince of Paint:

1. Dwight Howard (56%/58%)
2. Baron Davis (36%/79%)
3. Deshawn Stevenson (32%/53%)
4. Ron Artest (38%/73%)
5. Rashad McCants (36%/75%)
6. Rafer Alston (37%/78%)
7. Al Harrington (41%/78%)
8. Desmond Mason (44%/54%)
9. Elton Brand (45%/68%)
10. Sebastia Telfair (34%/80%)

The list is filled with the usual suspects: Howard, B-Diddy, Artest, Alston, and Desmond Mason are all known percentage offenders. Pound for pound, Howard is the worse shooter for fantasy overall and the worst free throw shooter, but the worst FG% shooter has this season been Baron Davis thanks to his 17.2 shots a game.

In an injury shortened year so far, Davis is shooting an even horrible by his standards 36% from the floor, including a dismal 3-17 shooting night on December 30th. Before he got hurt, Deshawn Stevenson was shooting an even worse 32%, but he’s only taking 7.4 shots a game to Davis’ 17.

One thing to remember about this list is that most of these guys are still worth owning in leagues and some (like Howard) are so good, that it makes sense to adjust your team’s strategy to accommodate their strengths and weaknesses. There is also the ongoing issue of Dwight Howard’s value in a H2H league vs. in a roto league, but we’ll leave that for another day.

Missing from the list is the original FT% offender, Shaq. The man is, in fact, only number 93 on the list of bad shooters. Shaq has always had a high FG% (as he does this year), but it is a late career resurgence in his free throw percentage – standing at a non-embarrassing 62% – which has removed him from the list of the league’s worst all-around shooters.

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