Quote Originally Posted by ml wave View Post
But the same would hold true for Payton too, right? His early shot clock attempts are going to primarily be wide open fast break layups, and his same-distance shots later in the clock would probably be much more contested, on average. Just thinking out loud, really, but wouldn't just about everyone in the league have higher efficiency early in the clock? I agree with what you're saying re: beating the defense...I just think that would benefit pretty much anyone (hence Gentry's preference).
It's true with Payton, but again, the point there is the timing, not necessarily the distance. I also need to add a correction: Gentry Ball stats do NOT include offensive rebound shots. Shamit removed those from his calculation since, as you point out, OREBS kind of just imply immediate offense no matter who is catching them.

You would be surprised how many people perform very, VERY poorly early in the shot clock. Even decent players. For example, Lamarcus Aldridge performs extremely poorly early in the shot clock. Love, Jokic, Harrison Barnes, Al Farouq Aminu, and Westbrook too. Westbrook is actually stunningly bad, probably because he really enjoys those pull up midrangers that he's very bad at.

Some of the data is available here, if you're interested: https://plot.ly/~sdua23/28/#plot