re: Largest FT attempt differential NBA stat

Kings shot more free throws than the lakers did

Sheesh goat foul drawers, what can the goat show not do

Sounds like the league took control of the suns game last night as well

Wow, the league is taking getting the Lakers into the postseason really seriously!!! Even making sure the teams that we need to lose end up doing so!!!!

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This is the problem with looking at results to develop the hypothesis. You can tell multiple stories with the same data. If you start with a hypothesis (the lakers get more favorable calls than their opponents), those same stats corroborate the claim in a much more straightforward way than saying “every team they play against is just less effective at getting to the line”.

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This is nonsense. There is no way to actually test this hypothesis, so we have to at least control for the factors that might contribute to free throws that are not a result of any officiating bias.

In particular a couple things that contribute to this are: number of opportunities (not just possessions, since a missed shot but a put-back off of an offensive rebound is 2 shots but 1 possessions) the type of of shot/play, shooting fouls vs. take fouls (e.g., end of game fouls to extend it while down), and FTAs awarded per shooting foul (e.g., 3 vs. 2; And-1 opportunities).

Luckily for us NBA.com tracks 11 different play types, and provides not only possession data that can result in a shooting foul (e.g., put back off miss is 2 opportunities), but the percentage of shooting fouls drawn from each play type.

In particular though, across all 11 play types there are on average 111.55 possessions per team per game, and 10.65 shooting fouls drawn per game. But to highlight some differences, the Lakers average 113.6 possessions per game; on the other hand, the Mavericks, another high frequency FT shooting team average only 106.2, so that's 7.4 fewer opportunities to draw a foul per game.

In addition, the distribution of play/shots plays a significant role. For example, on average, a spot up draws a foul 4.85% of the time, while a post up or a cut draws a foul 3x that (14.46% and 14.72%). So a team could draw more fouls in each of those areas, but have a considerably higher percentage of spot up plays, and could actually draw fewer fouls.

That said, because we have these data, we can control for these factors, and subtract the percentage of fouls drawn by each team from the average of each of the 11 play types and multiply that by the number of possessions in each of those areas. Then summing those together gives us the number of shooting fouls drawn above and below expectation (average). Then dividing those by the number of possessions, and multiplying that times 100, then we can determine how many fouls are drawn above/below expectation per 100 possessions.

In particular the Lakers draw ~0.81 more shooting fouls above expectation per 100 possessions. This is the 4th highest behind Philadelphia (1.40), New York (1.19), and Dallas (1.14). In addition, the difference between Dallas in 3rd and the Lakers in 4th is larger than the difference between the Lakers and Minnesota in 7th (0.51). And the difference between Philadelphia in 1st and the Lakers is greater than the difference between the Lakers and Houston in 12th (0.30).

Finally, since you care so much about hypotheses, we can do some hypothesis testing with a z-test given this distribution. And to give you the benefit of the doubt for favorable officiating, we can do a one-sided test instead with an additionally favorable alpha of 0.1 (90th percentile and above). In particular though, with a Z-Score of 1.14, that puts the Lakers at the 87.3 percentile (74.6 percentile if two-sided); however, the 3 teams ahead of them are in the 94.7, 95.4, and 97.6 percentile.

In other words, if anyone is getting favorable officiating than it's Philadelphia, New York, and Dallas, but especially Philadelphia, with their 1.4 more shooting fouls drawn per 100 possessions above expectation, which would in the >95th percentile whether it was a one-sided or two-sided hypothesis test.

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No style of play is going to have you over 218+ compared to the next team.

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FTA stat isn’t too off from most other years.

What’s notable is that they play the Suns and Warriors, who are both at the bottom of that FTA stat.

Giannis actually goes to the line almost twice as often as LeBron.

Totally legit

Lakers are better then Jim Hardwn about getting to the line. If boom didn’t have his yearly family reunion he would be here to tell us