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I don't have large data gathered to make a study but, over the years, every time I looked up, I've always seen large gap in opposing team FT% in my leagues. And it doesn't seem right.

I've always felt the same but never really looked deeper.

Analysis of the 1-seeds and 8-seeds in my league for their first seven games of the season has produced varying results. Overall, I tend to believe that teams tend to have a very slight bump to their FT percentage when facing a better team, but this difference is, for the most part, marginal at best. These %s are based on the opponent’s records CURRENTLY (not at the time they were played- though I will do some looking on that at another point).

C.C (8 seed)
% against Bottom 3 (below .500 teams): .600 (39/65)
% against Top 4 (above .500 teams): .719 (41/57)*
% Away games: .688 (33/48)
% Home games: .635 (47/74)
*The game against the 4-seed could be considered an outlier at 1.00 (9/9). The top 3 teams’ % against was .667 (32/48).

DMC (8 seed)
% against Bottom 3: .592 (32/54)
% against Top 4: .584 (38/65)
% against Top 2: .610 (25/41)*
% Away games: .618 (47/76)
% Home games: .535 (23/43)
* Top 2 isolated because a team from this conference decided to tank suddenly at mid-season, possibly skewing standings/data.

DIA (1 seed)
% against Bottom 4: .750 (69/92)
% against Top 3: .759 (60/79)
% Away games: .775 (69/89)
% Home games: .732 (60/82

CUT (1 seed)
% against Bottom 2: .500 (23/46)*
% against Bottom 4: .468 (36/77)
% against Top 3: .662 (45/68)
% against Top 1: .762 (16/21)*
% Away games: .397 (29/73)
% Home games: .583 (42/72)
* isolated Bottom 2/Top 1 due to mid season tanking mentioned regarding DMC.

Aside from CUT, all three teams have a better percentage in away games than in home games, and all four teams have better percentages against the clear top tier than against middling or underperforming teams. The % Away for CUT is also skewed by an abnormally low number of attempts in the game against that tanking team (5 attempts, with no other games below 20 attempts). Extrapolating the percentage against the tanking team to a comparable number of attempts would give the team and Away% of .432 (38/88), and removing the outlier completely would result in an Away% of .382 (26/68).

Overall conclusion is that FT% takes into account player levels for overall results, but suggests that teams shoot slightly higher when they have to “step up” against a stronger opponent. Whether this is true, or the small sample size just leads to incorrect inferences, remains to be seen.

not sure if this is true, but IF good defenses have a lower free throw percentages against that might not be THAT weird.

For example.
If a team has good defense it might lower the touches and shot attempts the opponents best player gets. Which will result in other players maybe getting more shot attempts which might also result in more free throw attempts for players who are less good and who shoot a lower percentage.

Not sure it this is the case though, something I thought about that could be worth looking at.

i think you are missing in your study the attitude used by those teams. I would guess that a team with TIE would shoot a lower percentage.

maybe that is why you see teams that shoot better against top opponents as they play with normal or CT ?

Interestingly enough, (at least from the data I have for certain regarding my own effort levels, since there is uncertainty about those of my opponents), the opposite is true:

Tie: .667 (24/36)
Nor: .648 (46/71)
CT: .556 (10/18)

This is keeping in mind that I played TIE against the top two teams, knowing I had no chance; I played Normal against teams 3-6 in the league table (at the time of the initial statistics); I played CT against the No. 7 team because I badly wanted a win before crossing conferences, and as a result had the worst FTs against them.

The idea that the best player may not take the most shots may be an accurate argument in favor of others having more attempts, but with FT being team-trained both through regular training and facility, the assumption that the player best elsewhere on the court will always have best FT% isn’t always the case. In fact, the player on my team who is by a wide margin the highest in salary and skills at his position, is currently 3/11 (.273) from the free throw line on the season.

This would support the theory that if he has more touches vs weaker opponents and more attempts, my percentage would be lower- however, it does reject the idea that better teams would have a lower opponent FT% because he’s the Shaq of US III.4 when he’s at the line.

I agree it doesn't always have to be the case, but because JS and JR also are used in the free throw calculation I am assuming that most of the time the better scorers will have a better free throw percentage than "the others". But like I said it's not based on any hard evidence I haven't really researched this.
And off course there is also a random factor so we would probably need multiple season of multiple teams to look into this. But do you have a higher free throw percentage against weaker teams or against better teams?

I have had better FT% against better teams this season; as of the data posted above, it was around an 11.9% improvement against the top half of my conference than against the bottom half. Facing the opposing 7-seed in the first cross-conference matchup, this trend continues, to an even greater extent (8/17 for 47.1%).

If your free throw percentage is higher against better defenses and your best scorer is bad at free throw shooting, that that only help my theory as your best scorer is getting less shots, so also less free throws, so the others are getting more of them and so increasing your free throw percentage against better defenses.

I just think that normally, generally speaking the better scorers will also have the better free throw percentage.

Last edited by Shark1999 at 3/11/2023 10:49:46 AM

In S55 there was a change to increase realism on FT% if you recall. JS and JR, together with experience I believe and of course FT influence a player's FT%. So I don't see any reason to research other factors towards player FT%.

If you're interested in why Opp FT% still varies, there could be other (meta) factors and some good suggestions have been made already (playing scrubs against teams you can't beat).