For the high school students who haven’t had probability and statistics yet: sorry. There has been a number of mentions of “expected value” without any explaination. I’m sure wikipedia would clear that up with a search, but here’s the quick explanation of it:
Expected value is used in probability. It means basically “how many points can you expect PER SHOT”.
Mathematically, it is the probability multiplied by the value.
For example: in basketball, it’s typical for a team to make 50% of their two point shots (probability of 0.5), and 40% of their three-pointers (probability of 0.4). Then the two types of shots have the following expected values:
Two pointer = 0.5 * 2 points => 1 point
Three pointer = 0.4 * 3 points => 1.2 points
This shows that the expected value of the three point shot is higher, which means teams should be taking more threes and less twos. This says that you’re expected to score 20% more points for each trip down the court by using the three. In a game that averages 100 points, taking nothing but threes should theoretically score you 20 more points than if you took only two pointers.
Lots of good discussion here on basketball strategy. Having coached and played basketball for my entire career (21 years teaching) before going into robotics, I must say I am thoroughly enjoying the points being discussed.
BTW, I never had a professional coach spend any time in my practices, but I know have 12 professionals who volunteer with my students on a daily basis.
I think it is very hard to compare this game to the real game of basketball. The number of balls alone makes it more difficult to compare but also because the height of the goal is what determines the difficulty of the shot. Basketball itself is determined by the distance from the goal for the shot’s success.
I believe one reason to having more mid range shots than three pointers is that coaches want to put the opposing team in the shooting penalty. You get more fouls called closer to the basket than out around the three point line.
As a coach, I used the inside/close range only as well as more long range shots but it always depended on my personnel I had on my team since I was a high school basketball coach. Play with what skills you have on your team, I see this same strategy employed at the higher levels of FRC in contest. Not all teams are composed of the same type player (robot).
Shooting more three pointers can definitely impact the flow of the game and strategy. In Texas, getting to the playoffs depended on a series of regular season games. I remember a well respected coach commenting to me about a team who depended on threes as there strategy: “You must do it for seven games in a row to win a championship.” As several of you have eluded to, human factors begin to play a major part in missed shots, streaks, etc.
I know that Rick Pitino had the philosophy that the worst shot in basketball was a long two pointer where the player was standing on the three point line. He would even sub for these players. Why waste a shot that six inches would have made a difference in the point total.
Ike, I suggest some light reading, 700 pages or so…
This book explains a lot of what you’re interested in with the history of the NBA section where the ABA/ABA merger and subsequent rule changes are adressed. Unfortunately Bill Simmons is rather long winded in his writting so it’s hard to summarize this much more than Karthik did above.
707 pages at $7.50 for a brand new hard cover… If I value the cover art at $0.43, then this material is worth $0.01 per page…:yikes:
I read Moneyball over Christmas break after seeing/enjoying the movie. It remined me how I loved baseball in my youth. I may have to give this a read after the championship.
Some more reading for you. Within the basketball sabremetrics community, there has been a lot of talk and research on the topic of efficiency. Shot location plays into this largely. Take a look at the following chart:
Notice that instead of three point percentage, they use a metric called “Effective Field Goal Percentage” or eFG%. This metric takes into account that three pointers are worth more than 2 points, and the shots are weighted accordingly. From this table you see that the most valuable shot in the NBA is still the dunk/layup with an expected value of 1.26 points this season. The three pointer is next with an EV of 1.01, with everything between being around 0.75.
This just scratches the surface of the analysis, but I figured it would give you a good taste of what’s being studied, and some insights into effective NBA shot selection. I’m sure you’ll find a lot more interesting questions and answers as you dig deeper.