I wrote this on another board, but thought I may as well post it here also, even if kind of rehashes a lot of what we all talk about. But in particular it kind of discusses why shooting percentage does not tell the whole story, and the way a lot of casual or old school fans, the way we've been taught to view those shooting percentage sometimes arent helpful to see what's really happening in a basketball game.

The basic fundamental building block of a basketball game is a possession. One team wants to score points, the other team wants to get the ball back for their own possession without allowing them to score any points. Therefore the basic stat of basketball is actually something that isn't even in the box score or tracked at all. Points per possession (or points allowed per possession). In general, most people end up converting this to Points per 100 possessions so its a nice large useful number.

What almost everybody traditionally looked at to evaluate how teams are doing in a particular game is the shooting percentages, field goal percentage, three point percentage, even free throw percentage. People do look at rebounding margin and turnover totals to kind of adjust in their mind why the shooting percentages might not have added up to the final score. The reason shooting percentages themselves arent that good, is because shots aren't really the basic factor like people think. You not only can have a possession where you take different types of shots (free throws, three pointers, jump shots, dunks, layups, whatever), but also you can have a possession where you dont take a shot at all, or possessions where you take multiple shots.

A&M is a terrible shooting team. We shot 38% last night, and 17% I think on three pointers. Our best offensive player missed almost every three he took. However, when we had the ball and took a shot, this is what happened. 38% of the time, we made it and got at least two points. Out of 38 misses, we rebounded the ball again 21 times (55% offensive rebound rate). So even though we suck at shooting, we are absolutely awesome at getting the ball back and shooting it again, often times under the goal with a higher percentage shot than the first one we took. So now 38% of the time we make the first shot, 55% of the time we get it back anyway, and just considering the first order of events in the cascade, now we shoot a second shot that we have a 38% chance to make. Our expected points from that possession is 1.01 points assuming all shots were 2 pointers. 1 point is the equivalent of 50% field goal percentage when you're not trying to get rebounds. So even though we absolutely suck ass at shooting, the points we are scoring per possession are the equivalent of a team that is shooting better than 50% but isnt getting the rebounds.

The other thing besides rebounding that is underrated is getting to the foul line. A&M is average to bad at shooting free throws, however, free throw percentage is almost meaningless compared to the raw number of free throw attempts you get. Even if you are a terrible 50% free throw shooter, because generally you get two shots, you will average one point per trip to the line for two shots, which is again the equivalent of taking a two pointer and making it at a 50% percentage, which is good. And if its a player who is actually 70-80% free throw shooter? That player will average like 1.5 expected points in that possession, which is the equivalent of having a player better than Seth Curry that shoots a 50% percentage on three pointers take a shot on a possession.

Getting fouled is an amazing result in a possession, as getting to take multiple free throws are among the highest average expected points you can gain in a single possession, plus you start the process of getting bonus free throws later for non-shooting fouls and opposing players start having to be taken out of the game. Getting offensive rebounds are also amazing, because they allow you to put up multiple shots and and have multiple opportunities to get fouled and go to the line. On the other side, turnovers are absolutely the worst thing than can happen (or best if you are on defense), because when you had the ball just before the turnover, you squandered an opportunity to put up a shot that could go in or to get fouled. A turnover is a guaranteed possession where you score zero points.

*nods approvingly but whispers into the earpiece you're wearing*
"Points per possession actually is on the box score these days"

It's on the official box scores on statbroadcast.

in a nutshell bad shooting teams can make up for bad shooting if they shoot many more shots than the opposition.

That's not really the point though, you're right.

I wonder if Buzz has decided that the randomization of shooting just is what it is, and he's decided to focus on offensive rebounding and drawing fouls because it's easier to teach or something.

Not saying I agree with that, but it just sure seems like we consider developing actual offensive skills an afterthought to offensive rebounding.

My vibes-based research is that everyone on our team misses their first free throw of the game 79.95% of the time.

When that first free throw comes after a long delay like a media timeout, that percentage goes up to 99.9999%

What the OP is describing are the The Four Factors of basketball, introduced by Dean Oliver in his seminal 2004 work "Basketball On Paper". These Four Factors are the building blocks of the efficiency rating systems used by most all analytics services and betting sportbooks.

I think the mistake is having a view that basketball is primarily a game made of "shots" instead of a game made of "possessions" and field goal and effective field goal percentages are really only about shots.

I think everyone would agree that the shots are still a huge factor within possessions.