What Are the Odds? Josh Smith vs. Kyle Korver and Three Point Shooting in the Playoffs

May 19, 2015; Oakland, CA, USA; Houston Rockets forward Josh Smith (5) shoots against Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green (23) in the first quarter in game one of the Western Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Oracle Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Atlanta’s offense has been struggling in the postseason, posting a 104.9 ORtg which is down from their 108.9 ORtg during the season. Part of the reason for the decline has been Kyle Korver’s slump- he’s shooting just 35% from three in the playoffs. Another playoff team- the Houston Rockets, have outpaced expectations partly due to the play of Josh Smith, who is amazingly shooting 36.5% from three in the playoffs. So yes, Josh Smith is shooting a higher percentage from three than Kyle Korver. Take a moment or maybe a few hours to digest that.[1. And yes, I checked their basketball-reference pages over and over and over to make sure I was seeing that correctly. It’s not a fluke.]

Of course, given those percentages above and what seems like an unlikely occurrence- that Smith would be shooting better from three than Kyle Korver, one of my first thoughts was how likely is that to happen[2. NERDS!!] given how late we are in the playoffs[3. And how many threes Smith and Korver have already taken to date in the playoffs.]?

So using a bit of math (the binomial distribution) and using Josh Smith’s career average of 28.5% on three pointers [4. which is roughly equal to the same % over his last 750 3pt attempts], Smith has about a 13% chance that he’d hit 19 or more threes given his 52 three point attempts in the playoffs. And when applying the same method for Korver but instead using his three point percentage over the last two seasons (48.3%)[5. since he has over 750 attempts], there’s about a 0.5% chance he’d hit 35 or less threes given his 100 three point attempts in the playoffs. Multiply those together to get the probability of both happening and you get 0.06% chance of Smith and Korver hitting those percentages on the amount of threes they’ve taken. [5. Although, that’s not actually the likelihood of Smith shooting higher than Korver, it’s just the likelihood of those guys shooting their current %’s or better for Smith and current %’s or worse for Korver. So that didn’t completely answer the question. But I’m sure if you did the permutations out, it’d be very unlikely as the chances of Korver shooting that poorly are low AND the chances of Smith shooting that well are also low.]

So there you have it, perhaps the most craziest and unlikeliest stat of the playoffs: Josh Smith shooting better from downtown than Kyle Korver.