Rockets and Free Throws

It just occurred to me that with Yao out for the rest of the season, our best and most prolific free throw shooter is now gone.

Here's what the rest of the Rockets who'll be playing regular minutes are shooting, along with predictions on how many free throws they'll shoot per game:

Code:

Player          MP      FT      FTA     FT%     pred_min  pred_FTA
------------------------------------------------------------------
Tracy McGrady   1503    152     221     68.8%      37       5.4
Luis Scola      1255    75      122     61.5%      27       2.6
Rafer Alston    1856    56      87      64.4%      33       1.5
Carl Landry     380     34      57      59.6%      27       4.1 
Bobby Jackson   931     42      52      80.8%      25       1.4
Luther Head     919     39      49      79.6%      20       1.1
Shane Battier   2046    34      47      72.3%      37       0.8
Chuck Hayes     1070    3       11      27.3%      19       0.2
Dikembe Mutombo 136     5       7       71.4%      15       0.8
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                   68.8%     240      17.9

This isn't pretty. If we can expect them to shoot at around the same percentages, get same number of free throws per minute, and play the minutes I predicted above on average, we'd only get about 18 free throw per game and shoot 69% on them. Maybe you can bump up those free throw attempts a bit to take into account guys getting more shots with Yao not in the game. Still, those numbers would put us just about at the bottom of the league both in FT% and free throw attempts (currently 70.3% and 19.9, respectively). Note that in our first game without Yao, we were 7-12 from the free throw line (thankfully, our defense / their putrid offense made that unimportant).

If we want to maintain our offensive efficiency, we need to make up for this with better shooting from the field, better offensive rebounding, and limiting turnovers. I think turnovers should actually reduce and hopefully offensive rebounding doesn't drop off with Dikembe, Landry, and Chuck getting increased minutes. That leaves shooting from the field. Without an interior presence close to the basket, what does that do to our 3-point shooting? Do our PFs score as easily around the basket with teams not having to concentrate on Yao? Without a go to guy in the post, will we have enough penetrators to create open shots for each other? I think these will be some important keys to our success going forward, because it appears inevitable that free throw shooting will be an Achilles heel.

 

Oh god ... we'd be even worse with Bonzi. I didn't even think of that. That would have meant Luther Freakin' Head was our best free throw shooter.

Well ... we would have had Aaron Brooks. He's alright.