Harden made more free throws than the entire Nuggets team attempted. In this game alone, Harden made more free throws than Rondo has all year. Harden has made 35% more free throws than #2 on that list (Westbrook). Harden has made more free throws than actual field goals in his career, and this will be his 4th season in a row accomplishing this unparalleled feat. 32.1% of his points come from free throws - highest in the league.
how common is it to make more FTs than FGs in a season? how common is it to score 50 while only making 12 shots from the field? i'd imagine both are quite rare, and that this fact is rather damning in terms of the state of nba officiating, particularly regarding how they favor one player. i mean, at least when westbrook shoots a ton of fts, i'm generally like, well, he's a total freak with crazy blow-by speed and ferocious finishing ability. i get why you might be often forced to foul to prevent dunks. with harden, it doesn't look that way when you're watching the game. i don't feel like if i don't foul him, he's going to get 50 anyway. the data, of course, support this in harden's case, as he never has big scoring games without getting to the line at abnormal rates. how the national press has given him and the nba officials a total pass on this is beyond me.
Agree with 100% of what you said. To answer your questions: 1. I looked at people with at least 7 FG and 7 FT made per game. It surprisingly happened several times...but mostly in the far past. Jerry West, World B Free, Moses Malone, etc. have all made more FT than FG before. This told me that it can happen...sometimes. Nobody has done it 4 seasons in a row like Harden. Also, these players were from a different era. In the past 20 years, which is more indicative of how the game is played now, only James Harden has done it. In terms of career averages, only 3 people have done it. James Harden, Neil Johnston, and Dolph Schayes. Neil and Dolph were bigs that played in the 50s. 2. Only 3 other players have scored 50+ points with 12 or less made baskets - Willie Burton, Kevin Martin, and Adrian Dantley. We don't know much about Dantley's stats like FGA. However, Burton made 12 baskets on 19 attempts (63 FG%) while Martin made 11 baskets on 22 attempts (50 FG%).
thanks for the research, thk; that sort of confirms my suspicions. GIVE THIS MAN THE MVP...and 4 bonus fts, just for giggles. maybe allstar weekend can replace the dunk contest with the "awkwardly draw contact" contest?
Just because I don't have much to do at work, I got the averages of games with 6 FTA or less. As we all already know, James Harden is by far the most reliant on free throw attempts, but lets just take a look at actual numbers. How much does he suffer when he only gets 6 free throw attempts or less (which isn't that little). His FG% is sub-40%. His TS% is really bad. His ppg drops the most and is actually the second lowest of this group, which is a big deal considering how he's second in the league in ppg. All other stars are still stars (or should I say, "actually stars"?). Their ppg dips only slightly, and they still maintain their above average / elite shooting percentages. James Harden 26 games 39.48 FG% 49.58 TS% 20.4 ppg LeBron James 26 games 48.91 FG% 56.53 TS% 22.04 ppg Stephen Curry 52 games 48.05 FG% 61.95 TS% 21.9 ppg Anthony Davis 31 games 53.08 FG% 56.9 TS% 20.42 ppg Chris Paul 55 games 48.46 FG% 56.72 TS% 17.44 ppg
^gold. i'm glad you have more time than me. if i found a few minutes, i wanted to calculate fta/total points correlations for all players vs. harden. that number will naturally be inflated because it's a part/total scenario, but i'm guessing his is significantly higher than others'. your numbers probably tell the story more cleanly, though.
It will be fun watching the playoffs this year, like past years, where Harden won't get the crunch time calls and he has to resort to playing actual basketball. Dribble, dribble, dribble, between the legs, dribble, dribble, crossover, still in the same spot as he started, fadeaway, brick, rinse repeat.
i'm afraid he'll get the mvp and the league will bend over backwards trying to finish off the star build, leaving us with 2006 all over again.
And then you have the media praising him for his 44 points while all blind to the fact that it took him a ton of FTs to get there.
no, now they praise his "ability to get to the line with ease". seriously, if there's more after wade and harden, I may actually stop watching the nba altogether.
Don't worry guys... Harden won't get it. The media has started asking the important question, like I heard today, "Is Harden/Curry doing enough to catch (note: Catch) Bron in the MVP race?" And it is an absolute joke that Harden is literally killing the league with foul shots.
True, I know Harden has some shots, but prevalently he has stretches where he couldn't make baskets if he lived on a hippy commune for a year. Harden plays with one lazy eye stretched towards the referee every game, and it was good to see him fall short against Portland last year because of just that (and Lamarcus of course).
Post all-star break, Harden is shooting 39.1 FG% and 31.8 3P%. In terms of making baskets, he is really inefficient. "Technically" though, he is efficient from a statistical / per possession basis because he shoots so many free throws. Still, it's disgusting to watch. Since the all-star break, 41% of his points have come from free throws.
Full disclosure: Until recently, I've always thought the Atlanta Hawk's logo was a backwards red pac-man thingy.
How does ESPN and sports media influence the fans you ask? Well, happen to watch a bit of First Take and caught the discussion of "Cav's would rank 3rd highest to win championship if in the West." Now that caught my eye so I listened to the conversation as Skip waxed that the Cavs are playing like the best team in the NBA. Anywho, apparently the idea was take a team out of the West and switch them with the Cavs and run 10,000 simulations to see which team would have higher percentage of coming out of the west. Now I don't remember all the specific numbers but the top 3 were: CLippers Spurs (I believe clips and spurs were in 30 percent range but could be wrong) Cavs 16% Now, you may be asking yourself what about the Warriors? Well that would be team that was switched out of the West. Take the #1 team in the league out and put the #2 team (from the East) in its place. I wondered why would they do that when if all things were equal they would take a team in West out with at least a similar record or win % as the Cavs, right? That would be the Clippers who at 47-25 are percentage points ahead of Clev who are 47-26. Clips are 5th in the West and Clev is 2nd in the East. Apparently Atlanta doesn't stack up being you know 1st in the East by 8 games and would be #2 in the West behind GS. This is the narrative of the bought and paid for media for the fans that swallow all this nonsense. Just promoting that the Cavs WOULD finish top 3 in the West after some high-tech simulations (don't forget to toss out the 10,000 simulations done number) would validate the push for the Bron praise that is set to come. Now the seed has been sown that it doesn't matter that if the playoffs started today and it was top 16 get in that 2 (YES TWO) teams from the East would make the playoffs with chicago at 44-29 would fall just short of SAS at 45-26. Haven't even heard much hate on the garbage L'eastern conference instead I saw last night a very excited sportscenter piece on the amazing race for 8th in the East. This is the race with Boston, Indy, Brooklyn and Charlotte who are all within a 1/2 game of each other. What they didn't show was that the current #8 seed (Boston) is 9 games under 500. Additionally the #7 seed (Miami) is 7 games under 500. Utah(11th seed in West) would actually be 2 games ahead tied with miami for 7th and 8th in the East. The sad part is this has happened every year since Big Boy Bron came into the league. The East is a Joke and all the teams from the East are fairly laughable. Once again the West will beat each other up while the EC Champs will probably cake walk.
