Implications of Hack Attack on a D12/Asik tandem

I think he will but Dwight has been shooting 64% from the line from the playoffs this year which is nearly 10% higher than his regular season percentage. Dwight is purely a rhythm FT shooter. If he goes like 1-4 from the strip - chances are he finishes like 3-11 or 4-15 etc.

If he goes 3-4 - he'll end the game 8-11 or 14-18.

he got into a rhythm towards the end of game one and has shot the ball from the ft line pretty since then. remove his game 1 performance Dwight has shot 69.4% from the line - which is freakin amazing for him.

 

I don't see how having 2 bad FT shooters vs. just one makes the difference as to that question. You can only hack one guy at a time so it's not like that the second guy compounds the problem.

 

Alter rhythms

 

The OP has brought up a very interesting (and troubling) point here.

I recently (yesterday) did some research on championship teams bigs FT shooting percentages. Went all the way back to the beginning of the 3-point era, 1980. And here's a simple fact:

Only one team (2000-01 Shaq/Kobe Laker team with Shaq, Horace Grant, and Robert Horry as 3 primary 4/5 bigs) has had their first 3 primary bigs at the 4/5 spots shoot a lower overall FT percentage then the trifecta of Dwight/Asik/Jones.

The next thing I discovered is there is a relatively substantial gap between those Shaq-led Laker teams FT shooting percentages and the other championship teams.

The next thing I looked at was how many FTs Dwight shoots per FT attempt compared to Shaq and his championship teams. Dwight shoots substantially more FT attempts than Shaq did.

The next thing I looked at was turnover rate between Shaq and Dwight. Dwight's turnover rate is 70% higher than Shaq's turnover rate was.


The bottom line of all this?

My conclusions:

1. If we run Howard/Asik/Jones out there as the primary trifecta of bigs chewing up the majority of minutes at the 4/5 then we don't really have a chance to win a championship. Dwight is nowhere near as offensively dominant as Shaq is for us to be able to have those 3 guys all shooting poorly from the FT line.

2. For us to win a championship we have to inject James Harden at the 4 spot and have Harden as essentially our 3rd big, getting the bulk of the 4 minutes behind Asik. Harden is really probably the only guy that we can play at the 4 that will bring up the FT percentages of our bigs enough and create enough mismatches for us to have a chance to win anything.




Omer Asik and James Harden are our 2 best power forwards.
Dwight Howard and Omer Asik are our 2 best centers.

Big man (4/5) rotation should be:

Dwight 36-40
Asik 30-36
Harden 20-25 minutes

The rest of the bigs should get scrap minutes at the 4/5.

 

Morey, if you're reading this, which you are, forget about DaDakota. This man needs to get a spot on your team. He is like Jonah Hill from MoneyBall.

 

When you shoot a lot of freethrows back to back it becomes like a practice session. Its easier to stay on target when you're constantly at the line vs sporadically.

 

Shaq won plenty. Ben Wallace won one on the Pistons. Howard made a Finals. Your sample size for poor shooting big men is pretty small, and Asik/Jones usually aren't even on the floor in the last couple minutes of most games.