Random Stat: Technical Free Throw Shooting

A: Well we would regard technicals as very different from flagrants -- for technicals the team gets to choose who shoots it from the five on the floor, whereas the flagrant is the guy who gets fouled, not to mention post flagrant foul you might expect a player to be a little shaken up and not at their best! You try shooting "freebies" after getting clobbered by say Danny Fortson!

So, we'll only look at the technicals:

Technical Free Throws 2005-06 season to 3/09 Player Team FTM FTA FT%  Billups DET 51  53  .962  Anthony DEN 34  44  .773  Cassell LAC 30  37  .811  Okur UTA 28  36  .778  Arenas WAS 27  34  .794  Nash PHO 30  32  .938  Nowitzki DAL 25  31  .806  Allen SEA 25  31  .806  Pierce BOS 22  29  .759  Johnson ATL 26  28  .929  Bryant LAL 26  28  .929  James CLE 22  26  .846  Crawford NYK 21  26  .808  Turkoglu ORL 21  26  .808  Korver PHI 20  25  .800  Rose TOR 16  24  .667  Boykins DEN 20  23  .870  Finley SAS 20  23  .870  James TOR 19  23  .826  Kidd NJN 16  20  .800  Carter NJN 13  20  .650  Hinrich CHI 16  19  .842  Webber PHI 15  19  .789  Mobley LAC 12  19  .632  Stojakovic SAC 16  18  .889  Croshere IND 15  18  .833  Fisher GSW 14  18  .778  Miller MEM 11  18  .611  Knight CHA 14  17  .824  Wesley HOU 13  17  .765  Jasikevicius IND 15  16  .938  Redd MIL 13  16  .813  Dixon POR 12  16  .750  Paul NOK 14  15  .933  Lue ATL 13  15  .867  Garnett MIN 10  15  .667

So the King of Technical Free Throw Shooting this season appears to be Chauncey Billups both for the sheer number of attempts, where has has a large lead over the rest of the players, and for his consistency in draining the shot -- a .962 FT rate is impressive! It's hard not to think this also begs the question of whether the Pistons are also adept at "drawing" their opponents into committing the T, Rasheed Wallace's own technical totals notwithstanding... Overall the league is shooting FT's as follows: .792 Technical FT's .744 Non-Technical FT's This actually is something of a surprise in that we would have expected the Technical% to be higher. Most units should have a .800+ free throw shooter among the five, and when you factor in the Billups, Ray Allen, Dirk Nowitzki types we would have guessed it would have been .825 or better. So do players shoot technicals worse than their non-technical free throws? As a matter of fact, yes they do! If you add up the expected free throws made from technical attempts based on the non-technical FT%, then the league should have converted .823 as a group, meaning they are underachieving by a not trivial 3%! Since sample sizes are puny it's not going to be very revealing, but here are the outliers: +.149 Joe Johnson (.929 Tech / .780 non-T) +.122 LeBron James (.846 vs .722) +.102 Chris Paul (.933 vs .832) -.158 Carter (.650 vs .808) -.168 M.Miller (.611 vs .780) -.240 Mobley (.632 vs .871)

You could posit all kinds of theories on why players might shoot the T worse, everything from not liking shooting without other players lined up, feeling the shot is unearned, not coming in the normal flow, or even feeling more/less pressure on the shot. We like to think that perhaps there's a touch of sympathy for the opponent who got dinged since technicals do indeed arise more than once in a while after legitimate bad calls...

The more interesting look though may be on the team level, so let's go there...

Team Technical Free Throw Shooting Offense Defense Team FTM FTA FT% FTM FTA FT%  Detroit 63  70  .900 46  49  .939  Denver 55  69  .797 62  79  .785  L.A. Clippers 45  59  .763 37  47  .787  Toronto 42  59  .712 33  49  .673  Memphis 37  57  .649 28  44  .636  Cleveland 44  56  .786 46  57  .807  Indiana 48  53  .906 34  41  .829  Portland 39  52  .750 36  43  .837  Utah 38  52  .731 44  55  .800  New Jersey 35  48  .729 37  44  .841  Philadelphia 38  47  .809 36  43  .837  Seattle 41  47  .872 38  47  .809  New York 34  46  .739 34  46  .739  Sacramento 35  46  .761 36  46  .783  San Antonio 38  46  .826 30  36  .833  Washington 37  46  .804 34  40  .850  Houston 37  45  .822 43  54  .796  Minnesota 36  45  .800 40  51  .784  Atlanta 40  44  .909 31  37  .838  Charlotte 34  44  .773 40  49  .816  Boston 34  43  .791 30  42  .714  Dallas 33  41  .805 42  53  .792  Orlando 30  41  .732 31  44  .705  New Orleans 31  40  .775 37  46  .804  Phoenix 35  39  .897 29  37  .784  Miami 27  38  .711 39  47  .830  Chicago 27  37  .730 36  46  .783  Golden State 27  35  .771 34  49  .694  L.A. Lakers 29  31  .935 42  50  .840  Milwaukee 26  31  .839 30  36  .833

The Pistons have indeed taken (and made) the most technical free throws this season, but don't go looking for a correlation to winning as you'll see Dallas, Phoenix and Miami down near the bottom. Interestingly Denver has taken the second most T's, but also yielded by far the most themselves, giving opponents 79 free shots from the stripe compared to 57 for second highest "givers" Cleveland. Should the Nuggets be considered the hotheads of the NBA? On the other hand Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Atlanta are the three teams with the fewest techical free throws given up. Other random facts: Net FTM +17 Detroit +14 Indiana +9 Toronto, Memphis, Atlanta ... -9 Dallas, Chicago -12 Miami -13 L.A. Lakers Technical Shooting% .935 L.A. Lakers .909 Atlanta .906 Indiana .900 Detroit ... .712 Toronto .711 Miami .649 Memphis

So there you have had it, a truly obscure stat! There have been a lot of requests to see "Clutch free throw shooting" numbers and we'll probably get to those in the not too distant future as well..

Do you have an idea for a cool "random stat" you would like to see? If so, drop us a line

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