It’s a Make-or-Miss League, Even More Than You Think
How makes and misses aren't just about the buckets
You’ve probably heard the adage, “It’s a make-or-miss league,” hundreds of times by now. It’s such a succinct explanation of basketball that it might as well be its official slogan. And while the concept is so painfully, obviously simple, there is far more complexity to the power of a make or miss than meets the eye.
Starting with the basics. Makes lead to points, and misses don’t, and you want more points than the opposition. While offensive rebounds and turnovers can tilt the possession battle away from the binary make-or-miss crucible, the fact remains that the team that shoots better is probably going to be the one that wins, but there’s more than the obvious reason for that.
All stats via PBPstats.com
What if I told you that the best defense was a good offense, and the best offense was a good defense? It might sound too good to be true, and it almost certainly is, but offensive execution bleeds into defensive solidity and vice versa, far more than you would think.
On the season, the overall league average offensive rating is 115.9, but that’s just the average of thousands of possessions. For instance, the league average offensive rating in possessions right after a steal is 133.7. Unfortunately, as hard as the Thunder might try, you can’t steal the ball on every possession. The vast majority of possessions end in a made or missed field goal, and it’s here where we see the power of a make-or-miss.
We’re almost halfway through the season, and the league average offensive rating following a made field goal comes in at a paltry 112.9, but surges to 117.7 after a miss. The average of the two is 115.3, which is almost exactly the overall league average. To put some faces to this, following a miss, the league plays offense at the same level as the Spurs and Cavaliers, but simply having to inbound the ball after a make turns them into the New Orleans Pelicans.
Switching to free throws, defense sees an even greater boost. Following a made free throw, teams have produced an offensive rating of 110.6, and a 115.4 offensive rating after a miss. Perhaps coaches should be privy to this, because intentionally turning your team into the Wizards when you’re chasing a game seems less than ideal.
All of this is intuitive and has been known for ages. Following a made basket, the defense gets extra time to run back, get set, and find their ideal defensive matchups. However, after a miss, there is far more chaos. Players might be out of position after crashing the offensive glass, there could be dangerous cross-matches due to a defensive switch, and there are precious few seconds to get back and ready to defend.
Now, the best offenses in the league don’t suddenly crater because the opposition hit a shot, just as the worst offenses don’t become death, destroyer of worlds after a miss. The Nuggets have the best offensive rating in the league (123.4), are second after a miss (125.9), and first following a make (121.4). That being said, not everyone has the Nuggets offense, and some teams appear to be more sensitive to the make-or-miss effect, while others have some WTF splits.
The Post-Miss Risers
This is an eclectic group, but there appear to be two distinct groups. The first are bad offenses that use misses as a chance to get out and juice their overall offense, and the second are solid to good offenses that just so happen to be elite in post-miss situations.
I find the Wizards’ placement to be quite interesting. They have by far the worst offense in the league following a make, but rank 15th following a miss. Their effective field goal percentage (eFG%) improves by 4.35%, and while that’s sizeable, it’s nowhere near the largest. What seems to be the largest driver of their improvement is a drop in turnovers. Following a make, they’ve averaged 16.8 turnovers per 100 possessions, but that figure drops to 14.8 after a miss. We see a similar phenomenon with the Trail Blazers and Cavaliers, and to a lesser degree, the Celtics. Counterintuitively, on a league-wide level, turnover rate is unaffected by the make-or-miss effect. The league averages 14.9 turnovers per 100 possessions following a made field goal and 14.7 after a miss.
As for the Orlando Magic, Memphis Grizzlies, Toronto Raptors, New York Knicks, Dallas Mavericks, and Charlotte Hornets, their improvement largely stems from a sizeable boost in eFG%.
Outside of the Mavericks’ increase in turnovers, each team improves both their shooting efficiency and their turnover suppression in possessions following a missed field goal compared to a made field goal. Unsurprisingly, the linear correlation between a team’s offensive improvement is tied most closely to their improvement in True Shooting percentage (TS%), eFG%, and turnovers per 100 possessions. Before we move on, here are some notable contenders outside the top ten: San Antonio: +6 (12th), Oklahoma City: +5.88 (13th), Houston: +5.84 (14th), Detroit: +4.8 (17th), Denver: +4.5 (18th).
The Makers
Instead of focusing on the best teams following a miss or who experience the largest swing, I want to shoutout the teams who actually run good offense. Simply, when we talk about good offense, we’re usually talking about efficient half-court offense against a set defense, which is what you’ll face nine times out of ten following a made field goal.
Points per 100 Following Made FG
If you’re wondering why pundits keep suggesting that the Nuggets are in a similar tier as the Oklahoma City Thunder, this chart is the reason. Their offense against a set defense has been astronomically good, while the Thunder’s has been mediocre. Now, the Thunder are elite on defense, but what makes the Nuggets so dangerous is that they can legitimately outscore anyone in any situation. This is further proof that Nikola Jokic is an offensive cheat code.
The WTFs
This final cohort of teams, I have no idea what to do with. Out of 30 teams, five actually see their offensive rating fall following a miss, compared to a make. Needless to say, this is incredibly odd, but it doesn’t necessarily give us any directional indications. The optimist would say they’re underperforming following misses, while the pessimist would argue they’re overperforming after makes. The answer, for a few of these teams, could mean an awful lot for their playoff hopes.
The Pacers are the least interesting team here because they have no hope of making the playoffs and are only slightly less effective following a miss. However, if you want to cry, know they had a 117.7 offensive rating following a miss last season, compared to 108.4 this season. Tyrese Haliburton deserves more plaudits for how wretched this Pacers’ season has been.
Brooklyn, like Indiana, has no hope of making the playoffs, but the degree to which their shooting falls off is incredible. No team even comes close to experiencing the decline they see in efficiency, but there is good news. They actually see their 2-point efficiency improve by 4.22%, and it’s just a league-worst decline in 3-point efficiency (-6.38%) that’s dragging them down. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but there’s potentially a league-average or better offense in Brooklyn hiding in plain sight. If they intend to maximize their draft pick, which they should, they need to trade Michael Porter Jr. before regression turns them into a mediocre team.
The Hawks’ underperformance following a miss is somewhat surprising. Without Trae Young for most of the season, you would have expected them to be a grab-and-go monster, but instead, they’re just meh. There’s no smoking gun here, and they’re not too far from the black, but the theory of this team has been size, athleticism, and defense, which lends itself to being excellent following a miss and substandard following a make. Now, the question remains: is their 10th-ranked offense following a make or their 25th-ranked offense after a miss more indicative of their true talent level? I’d wager that neither is, and expecting them to boomerang forward or completely collapse is unlikely. Chances are, their offense will putter along like it has, as both regress towards the mean. They’ll be different, while being the exact same.
Philadelphia’s situation is not difficult to parse out. They need to stop turning the ball over with reckless abandon following a miss. I cannot stress this enough: what they’ve done on the turnover front feels borderline statistically impossible. Their 5.38 turnovers per 100 possessions increase is not only the largest in the league, it doesn’t even have a neighbor. It’s like a lonely island in the middle of the ocean on a distant planet in a galaxy far, far away. The Lakers are second with a turnover per 100 possessions increase of 1.97. The average is a decline of -0.14, and the standard deviation is 1.51. They’re well over three standard deviations above the mean, while no one is even at two, in either direction. If the Sixers can solve this one problem, they should have no problem boosting their offense to a top ten unit.
What the hell is going on in Miami? They turn the ball over slightly more, and shoot slightly worse, but how the hell does that add up to a drop of -6.3 points per 100 possessions? Well, it’s just a lot of little things adding up. They get to the line a little less, they get slightly fewer offensive boards, and when you mix that with worse shooting and turnover suppression, you get this insanity.
The Heat have been playing at the fastest pace all season, and it might be that they’re playing a little too fast coming off misses. Their 9.14 seconds per possession following a miss, excluding second-chance opportunities, is first in the league, and it’s leading to the second-worst first-shot offense in these situations. As my high school coach would say, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” I think the Heat would benefit tremendously by pumping the brakes, ever so slightly, off of misses.
For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like, you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.