Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
I think it's fair to speculate about this, and I also understand why you split the season by All-star break (it's a natural break that occurs in the schedule anyway, feels appropriate) but I do think it misrepresents sample size a bit.
Pre All Star Break for Herb was a 56 game sample size of shooting 36% from 3, 50% from the field.
The Post-All Star Break decline did happen, but there were only 22 regular season games played after that point for Herb. So that colder stretch was actually significantly shorter than the pre-All Star sample. I know you weren't intending to mislead but I think just framing it as pre and post makes it read as though it's two halves of the season, when it's not: the post-All Star sample or Herb was less than 1/3rd of his overall games played.
Then, as you mention, his sample size in the playoffs was small. I don't, however, think that means it should just be completely excluded from the totals because its still an indicator of how he shot during the course of the year. For that matter, the 2 play-in games should count as well, I think. If we add in those 8 games played after the conclusion of the regular season, then this is what we get:
Pre All Star: 56 games. 49.9%FG, 35.8%3pt on 1.9 per game, 85.5%FT
Post All Star (incl. Playoffs + Play In): 30 games. 39.4%FG, 37.3% from 3 on 2.8 per game, 85.5%FT
When you do it that way, including the post-season and the play-in, what you find is that his FT% stays the same and actually his 3pt% goes up on more attempts per game. It's his 2pt% that really suffers.
Suddenly the regression doesn't look quite as dire as it might given your initial presentation. In fact the shooting from 3 - which is the topic you spend most of your comment on - got better on more shots overall in that 30 game span. I'm not trying to say that the 37% version of Herb is more 'real' than the 30% version you show, because we're still talking about a small enough sample of shots that 8 games can wildly swing the percentages, but similarly I don't know that we can say the 30% version is more indicative than the 37% either. It's just not a large enough sample of shots to get too definitive about, imo.
Because of this, as well as the stability of the FT% over time, I'm not quite as pessimistic about his shooting as you might be. I still don't think he's ever going to be a sniper, hitting 42% of his 3s on 8 per game or anything like that, but I don't really see the signs of a Thybulle-esque falloff.