After three games, the U.S. has the worst three-point shooting percentage of any team — men’s or women’s — in Beijing.
Here is more. Can you build a simple model showing that this is in fact likely the case for the best team?
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The best team should get lots of easy baskets. A higher percentage of their threes are the result of either screw-ups (picking up there dribble or thinking a pass was open and then having a second thought, beating the shot clock, or when the opposition has its best defensive team in the game.
Truthfully, however, it seems like Kobe just wants to prove he can be an unselfish “role player” and keeps shooting threes even though that isn’t his game.
The international line is only 20’6″ compared to an NBA three which is 23’9″ at the top to 22′ in the corner. While this would suggest that NBA players should have an easier time making three pointers since they are closer, I would venture that years of acquired muscle memory result in a discord between what they see (the international line) and what years of training conditioned (the longer, NBA three). While Coach K may have fought nature to develop a TEAM, I’m venturing its impossible to correct what years of practice in the gym have perfected (Kobe’s three point shooting percentage exemplifies this possibility).
The 3 point success rate must be >= 2/3 of the 2 point success rate to be advantageous if you have the choice. If you always have the choice, it’s easy.
1) I challenge the premise that the US is the worst three point shooting team in the tournament. If we think shooting three pointers follows a binomial distribution, there’s still a 20% chance that the US is a true 35% shooting team and has just had bad luck. This is especially likely if you consider the shooting mix – Kobe has taken 20 out of the 65 US three pointers himself. Remove him and the US is shooting 16 for 45.
2) Despite poor three point shooting, the US still leads the tournament in field goal percentage. They’re shooting an astounding 66% from inside the arc. That’s equivalent to shooting 44% from the three point line.
3) My simple model: the object of basketball is to maximize the difference between the number of points your team scores and the number of points the opponent gives up. Players are selected for both offensive and defensive characteristics. The US has players capable of shooting at a high percentage from three point range (viz. Michael Redd, who doesn’t play much, and JJ Reddick, who didn’t make the team) but maximizes output by using other players most of the time. Other countries with less skilled defensive players on average are more likely to select for three point shooting on the margin.
@ Scott – I think you need to be careful about lumping all NBA players together in this regard. Most of the NBA players playing in the Olympics are used to being the focus of the defense, consequently they are used to having to shoot off the dribble since they are rarely left alone. In the case of Dirk, this is still the case since Germany is not very good. However, the US team has so many good players that they are being dared to shoot from 3 since they have so many other weapons, many of these players aren’t used to having to shoot spot-up 3′s (especially Kobe).
To Scott. europeans NBa players played by Fiba rules before comming to the uSA. They have played for years in international events after reaching the NBA.They have played together for years. And they dont have to beat the antiamericanism of the referees. I heard a venezuelan referre saying in tv : if i were there i would call that play. And he was commenting a NBA game where rules are diferent from Fiba. And not only in the book , you wont see ever a fiba ganme ending with a player bleeding like Karl Malone. They want to show i dare to call a foul on Kobe.
In Fiba games you have to play zone, against it you shot fro 3 points. In the NBA game far harder you paly one to one and go to the infight , no one will call you a foul unless you hit the floor with the other. So you dont need along shot
Nate is right, the obvious answer is no. Is 3-point shooting percentage negatively correlated with winning percentage in the NCAA or NBA?
I assume TC was suggesting that the best teams would be the best teams because they had players who could create high-percentage close-in shots and therefore won’t emphasize outside shooting (or 3-point shooting) as a strategy, or as basis for choosing players for the team. However even the best teams would like to put players on the floor with different skills and can utilize outside shooters as a way to prevent the other team from “packing” the defense. If the USA does not have effective outside shooters on their squad, then I would think this suggests non-optimal player selection.
You could perhaps argue that weaker teams will emphasize 3-point shooting to a greater degree in strategy and in choosing team members, but then you’d have the weaker teams taking 3-pointers against defenses designed to stop 3-pointers, while the better teams will be taking 3-pointers against defenses not so much designed to stop 3-pointers, so it wouldn’t be clear (from the model) which type of team you’d expect to have a higher percentage.
As a final note, NBA players in general have an incentive to become good 3-point shooters. It is a lot easier to become highly proficient at shooting 3′s as opposed to becoming highly proficient at creating good 2-point shots. You see savvy vets who can’t score 2′s to save their life shooting 3′s effectively. Bruce Bowen, Nate MacMillan and Sam Perkins come quickly to mind. As I recall even Magic Johnson developed a nice set-shot 3 late in his career.
Team USA happens to have some players this time who take a lot of NBA 3′s and don’t shoot them very well: Lebron is .324 for his career, Kobe .340, Kidd .337, Anthony .294, Wade .258. (Wade and Anthony don’t shoot that many but do shoot some). I would suggest that Team USA’s poor 3-point shooting is a cultural artifact: NBA superstars can shoot 3-pointers without having to be good at shooting them. Poorly designed incentives….
My model:
Start with the premise that the ability to score inside is the most efficient way to score, but only when one has sufficiently skilled players. Big, fast athletic players like Kobe, Lebron and Dwyane Wade. However, such players are rare.
In the absence of sufficiently skilled inside players, the next most efficient offence is to build one’s team around deadly 3-point shooters. Which are somewhat more common.
So, the teams that have access to the rare, superior players build their teams around them and are the most efficient teams, However, these players still shoot some 3′s. When they do so they are relying on a skill for which they were not chosen (and perhaps in less conducive situations), and thus shoot a lower percentage.
This model ignores defense entirely, which probably contributes to the correlation. I do think that players chosen for their pure 3 point shooting tend to be worse overall defensively than the athletic inside players. However, I don’t think this is the dominant effect.
Maybe they simply generate more risky shots than their opposition?
It is possible for accuracy to go down whilst scores rise so long as marginal efficiency falls slower than marginal volume rises.
OK, I admit I know nothing about basketball, but watching the US-China heat I was struck by how the US piled through the Chinese defence to score at close quarters. There should be simple models which explain scoring patterns in terms of how a team “spends” its possession between two curves of marginally decreasing effectiveness for 2 and 3 pointers.
3P% doesn’t correlate with any other basketball skills. You can be an excellent or poor 3 point shooter regardless of your other skills on the court. It’s also unrelated to your athletic talent. Therefore, a physically untalented basketball player can contribute by practicing and becoming skilled at 3 point shooting.
The US team, with a bigger pool of talented players, can choose players that excel at all aspects of the game. Overall, that will tend not to focus on 3 point shooting, because there’s so many more aspects of the game (rebounding, defense, athletic ability, etc.) Those other skills may or may not come with 3 point shooting ability.
Other teams, with smaller pools of talented players, will end up with more players whose only significant skill is 3 point shooting. Because so much of the teams overall ability will be tied up in 3 point shooting the team will focus on ways to maximize the effectiveness of the 3 point shot. This may end up with teams not selecting physically gifted players that can’t shoot, since that’s the scheme.
In the end, you have a US team that completely dominates every aspect of the game but 3 point shooting, and other teams that almost give up everythign but 3 point shooting.
Kobe’s shooting percentage is luck. I’d stack the rest of the team there, too.
That said, why didn’t the team’s players (specifically Kobe) decide to try and practice that shorter 3? If the NBA moved the line to this distance you can be sure these players would be wearing out the floor trying to nail down these shots for the regular season. Instead, you see Kobe going with his “more comfortable” shot at a longer distance. His 1 for 12 or whatever is noise, but seeing the shot location makes me want to know why there wasn’t more dedication to prepare for that line so that the team can try and exploit the shorter distance.
What if the US team just isn’t trying too hard?
The games I saw basically went like this: teams scored equally for a while, then during one period the US builds a 20+ points advantage, and both teams go back to equal scoring. If the non-US team comes too close, the US shifts gear and makes a bunch of points again. Too me at least it looked as if the US played below its capacity for most of the time, simply because they were not pushed.
So, my theory: the low percentages come from those relaxed periods when the US is already in a safe lead. The players become a bit less sharp, take too risky shots, don’t pass to the specialists but try for themselves, etc. If the US were to meet a stronger opponent than up to now, if there is such a team, then percentagers would go up again.
As an aside: Among my friends and I, this is the major criticism of the USA team: the addition of one or two great 3-point shooters would really help the team. (but they probably don’t need it).
There are many contributing factors for this:
(1) lack of three-point specialists on the USA team (factored by playing time)
(2) game dynamics: US is ahead or very confident, lets other team get better 3-point looks. In addition, US being confident means less focus, less quality 3-point shots.
(3) basic basketball: go for the easy layup or step-back for the three-pointer… we remember the “stepping back” for the three pointer because it is so weird = not good strategy unless you are shooting extremely well. The US has been getting huge numbers of easy buckets – layups and dunks.
Given that this is single-elimination basketball, a US loss is not crazy – one bad night for the US and a good night for someone else. But focus on defense helps minimize the bad night/good night scenario, so I see gold for the US…
I don’t know how much time the average MR reader has spent shooting jumpshots, but as someone who has probably spent too much time doing it, that step in makes a big difference. I can shoot the college (19’9”) three pretty well, but put me at 17′ and I’ll struggle.
As for the model, NBA data shows that the highest points per shot areas (sorry I don’t have a link but I’ve seen the charts) is right at the hoop and at the 3 point line. With a closer three point line, I would expect even better points per shot at the 3 point line. A weak shooting team can obviously overcome that problem (as the US team did). Their defense and ability to get to the basket let them overcome this weakness, but that was possible because of a huge discrepancy in athleticism and talent (excluding shooting talent)
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