Lots of players are told things by their coaches, but they either don’t implement them, or can’t implement them as much as the coach would like. For instance, for the last few years Atlanta’s coach, Mike Woodson, has been saying that Josh Smith was taking too many threes. Yet Josh never seemed to really change that habit. Now perhaps he was shooting less of them than if Woodson had never said anything, but who knows? However, this year, for some reason he’s finally not shooting threes. He’s literally only attempted three of ‘em (& for all I know those could’ve just been end-of-the-buzzer heaves).

The only time a coach really told ‘Toine to hoist to his heart’s content was Jim O’Brien. And it’s no coincidence that those were perhaps Walker’s best years. O’Brien loves the three-pointers and created a whole offense around it, which really played to Walker’s strengths. And it goes both ways: while Antoine never fully conformed to how other coaches wanted him to play, a bunch of those coaches never created offenses that fully used him. Like I think he was always best as a sort of point-forward, but not enough coaches used him like that.

Lastly, it’s not like Walker’s alone in jacking up outside shots when coaches would rather him drive. As players get older, that tends to be what they do (see Vince Carter, TMac, Kobe, Michael Jordan, etc.)

I know what True Shooting Percentage is, but I didn’t want to get into jargon. Although, as you point out, since I wasn’t talking about free-throws, if I was to use stat lingo, I was actually talking about Effective FG%. On a side note that you personally will find interesting, the inventor of eFG% is none other than current Clips coach Mike Dunleavy. He was looking for a new contract and didn’t have a great fg%, but he shot threes which he felt balanced it out. So he created eFG% to show that his shooting was better than it seemed.

The thing I was(&still am) too lazy to look up was some stat research someone did that showed in general what are the best shots to take, not about an individual’s shooting percentage. That’s not to say that then everyone should take those types of shots. Meaning if the study showed that shots within 5 feet are best, followed by three-pointers, well clearly someone like Tim Duncan, if he can’t get within 5 feet, shouldn’t go out to three-point land.

Are people really that small minded they believe Walker never listened to anyone?

“True Shooting Percentage; the formula is PTS / (2 * (FGA + 0.44 * FTA)). True shooting percentage is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.”

Finding that would have taken too long? Think of your readers.

-S