In Game 5, Atlanta Finally Hit Open Shots

After two losses in Boston the series against the Celtics was tied up coming back to Atlanta. The Hawks won Game 5 convincingly and one the reasons that they won were that their open shots were finally falling.

The plot above shows Atlanta shooting percentage on open three-point shots for every individual game this season. The dismal shooting on open shots from deep in the first four playoff games are can be seen clearly in the yellow dots.

Several things come to mind when looking at this plot, and we are going to explore some of those in this article. First of all, that seems like a lot of open three-point attempts? Second of all, given that this is open three-point attempts and that the 3FG% in the entire league on all attempts is 35.4%, the shooting percentages in the plot seem low?

Atlanta’s offense produces a lot of open three-point shots[1. Open shots are defined here as shots with the defender being 6 feet or more from the shooter. Stats.nba.com calls those shots “wide open” while shots with a defender 4-6 feet away are designated “open”. But previous research here has shown that those are not open as such.] In 2014-15 the Hawks led the league together with the Rockets with 12.8 open three-point shots per game:

This season, they again lead the league in number of open three-point shots, but now by quite an extreme margin, as can be seen in the plot below. 16.3 open three-point attempts per game for Atlanta. Almost 4 attempts more than number two, Golden State Warriors.

But even with over 300 more open three-point attempts on the season than the team in second place, the Atlanta Hawks only led in open threes made by around 30. Because the Hawks shot terribly on open threes, as can also be seen in the plot below:

The Hawks obviously did not always shoot this poorly on open threes, as can be seen in the second plot of this article. Last year they shot 39.4% on such shots in the regular season. But it is interesting to look how their shooting progressed last season:

As we saw earlier, the Hawks shot more open threes this season than last season[2. The dots are noticeably smaller om 2014-15 than 2015-16!] The Hawks had some lava-hot shooting nights in the first part of last season before cooling off after the All-Star break with even more struggles in the playoffs. Still, compared to this season they had many far more great shooting nights last year. This season the Hawks shot above 55% on open threes once. Last season they did it 13 times. This season the Hawks shot like they did in the 2015 playoffs rather than the 2014-15 regular season.

Charting the most important shooters for the Hawks illustrates why the Hawks have dropped off on open threes:

Al Horford started shooting threes this year with 256 attempts compared to only 36 a year ago 216 of those shots were with a defender 6 feet or more away, the fifth highest number of open attempts in the NBA. Kent Bazemore eight with 198 open attempts. They shot a below average 34.5% combined on those shots. Millsap has also had a rough year, only hitting 31.9% on open threes. Coming off a histrica 2014-15 but also offseason ankle suregery, Kyle Korver(!) shot 36.2%(!!) on open threes, which is a fact that I triple-checked because I just couldn’t believe it to be true..

While the Hawks miss DeMarre Carroll, most times they miss Korver and Millsap’s shooting from last year. Teams seem content to let Horford, Bazemore and Millsap shoot open shots and Atlanta has not been able to consistently make the opponent pay.

That is, until Game 5 against Boston.