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.
Man, I'm depressed enough already. Who's going to shoot techs? Bobby Jackson? (if he's on the floor) What an awful average!
In the words of Lou Holtz: The Rockets "shoot free throws like someone is guarding" them! We need to pay Lou to come, put on some Rockets gear, and have a pep talk with this group about their free throws!
those percentages are atrocious. im really glad we did the jackson deal now just because of his free throw shooting.
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.
