Nylon Calculus: LeBron, Curry, and the mentality of missing

The Golden State Warriors entered the postseason as one of the best offensive units in history — one that has scored at a rate of 113.2 points per 100 possessions. Golden State is an absolute juggernaut, a scoring machine. Even still, the most likely result of any particular offensive possession for the Warriors is a MISSED shot by Stephen Curry. On an average night, Curry misses more shots (9.8 misses per game) than he makes (8.5); he misses more shots than either Kevin Durant (8.9) or Klay Thompson (8.3) makes, too.

In Cleveland, LeBron James is also missing a lot of shots, more than eight each night. In his 14-year career, James has missed over 10,000 regular-season field goals (top-20 in NBA history) and he’s missed another 2,000+ in the postseason (third-most ever).

How do superstars like James and Curry deal with all this failure? Does the constant missing get in their heads?

To quantify how players react to missing field goals, I looked up the 2016-17 regular-season shot logs of the four most-prolific Cavalier shooters (James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, and J.R. Smith) and the four most-prolific Warrior shooters (Curry, Durant, Thompson, and Draymond Green) on Basketball-Reference. I identified every cold-shooting streak suffered by one of those players — as many as ten straight missed shots in a single game — and I calculated the change in shot distance following each of these cold streaks.

So, for example, after James missed a single shot, his next field goal attempt came from a location 5.0-feet closer to the basket, on average. Following back-to-back misses, James moved in again — taking his next shot from, on average, 4.6-feet nearer to the basket relative to his previous one. After three or more consecutive missed shots, James’ average shot position was 6.3-feet closer than his prior attempt.

For comparison, I used the same approach for hot-shooting streaks, examining changes in shot distance after a single made basket, following back-to-back makes, and on the heels of three-or-more consecutive made baskets.

However, this approach of calculating changes in shot distance based on prior shot results tends to EXAGGERATE the intensity of a player’s reaction to a missed or made field goal attempt. To help explain why, take a peek at James’ shot chart from the 2016-17 regular season. He was brutally efficient around the basket again this year; but he was no better than league-average from most of the shooting locations outside of the paint. As a result, his average distance on a made shot (7.4 feet) was much closer to the hoop than his average distance on a missed shot (15.1 feet). So that, compared to his typical miss, any randomly-selected field goal attempt from James’ shot log would tend to be shorter by an average distance of 4.2-feet (10.9-foot average on all shots compared to 15.1-foot average on missed shots).

In other words, my initial approach of looking at changes in shot distances after missed field goals encourages us to construe a cause-and-effect relationship that might not actually exist. This distortion is especially strong for James, who has the biggest discrepancy in made-vs.-missed shot distances among the eight players evaluated (7.7 feet).

A better approach, then, might be to look how cold streaks impact shot distance relative to a player’s overall average, instead of comparing to his previous shot. For example, following a single miss, James’ average location on the subsequent shot was 10.2 feet or -0.7 feet relative to his average. After back-to-back misses James’ average shot location was 9.2 feet or -1.7 feet compared to his average. Additional misses yielded only a small additional decrease in range (-1.8 feet less than average after three or more misses). On the flip side, James stepped back to an average shot location of 12.3 feet (+1.4) or 13.4 feet (+2.5) following hot streaks of two and three or more made baskets, respectively.

In the plots above, players with larger bars (more color) are more sensitive to their cold- and hot-shooting, whereas players with smaller bars (less color) appear to be less influenced by their recent shot results.

Interestingly, James’ reactions to cold- and hot-shooting streaks were basically the same as Curry’s, albeit centered around a shorter average shot distance (10.9 feet as opposed to Curry’s 18.2-foot average). James and Curry are both focal points of their respective offenses and each one surely feels the onus to keep things from going off the rails whenever his individual shooting touch turns cold. In these circumstances, both players have the versatility and the responsibility to “put the pressure on the defense” by going into “attack mode.”

At the same time, neither James nor Curry can afford to become one-dimensional. The Cavaliers and Warriors rely on these two leaders to provide consistent baselines of production and neither one can shrink away from a cold shooting night by shutting down their jumpers, entirely. This ability to consistently strike a balance between scoring efficiency and volume is what defines superstars like James and Curry.

By comparison, tertiary scorers like Green and Love have license to make more drastic game-to-game changes in their approach in response to cold- or hot-shooting. If Draymond starts off with two consecutive misses from deep? The Warriors coaching staff might encourage him to be more selective with his subsequent long-range efforts. Accordingly, Green has the largest pink bar — representing a 3.0-foot decrease in shot distance after back-to-back misses relative to his average.

But both of these players can have hot-shooting nights, too. If Love gets it rolling early with a couple of 3-pointers, his teammates will tend to keep setting him up from distance. The result is a big green bar — representing a 5.7-foot increase in shot distance relative to his average, after three or more consecutive makes. Basically, these guys aren’t robots. Indeed, Green and Love are the two players in the group who are most sensitive to their own cold- and hot-shooting.

On the other end of the spectrum, we find the apex-predator scorers: Durant, Irving, and Thompson, for whom unwavering self-confidence is prerequisite for survival.

“I’m never going to doubt myself,” Thompson told reporters after a first-round playoff victory over Portland last spring. “I mean, if I’m not out there hunting my shot and trying to get open looks, then I’m ineffective…whatever the result was of the play before, forget about it.”

Or as Durant more succinctly put it: “Ima shoot it til my arms fall off”. KD was explaining his mindset to reporters during his previous finals appearance, before Game 4 in the 2012, “I don’t care if I miss it or make it, I’m going to keep believing in myself.”

You can see the impact of this shooter’s mentality in the charts of Durant, Irving, and Thompson. They have less pink than the primary creators (James and Curry) and the tertiary scorers (Green and Love) — with shot-distance decreases of no more than 1.4 feet in response to cold shooting. Irving, in particular, has a very vertical chart — with no more than a 1.0-foot change in average shot distance in either direction in response to his cold- or hot-shooting streaks.

But, when it comes to shooters-gonna-shoot-it-ness, J.R. Smith is definitely in a class of his own.

Full disclosure: Smith had the fewest field goal attempts of any of these eight players — he only got up 356 shots this season because of the games he missed with a broken thumb. Regardless of this obligatory small-sample-size caveat, Smith’s chart is too good to ignore. He’s the only one of the group who moves AWAY from the hoop after three or more consecutive missed shots (+1.9 feet) and moves TOWARDS the basket after three or more consecutive made shots (-0.5 feet). Honestly, he might be the only basketball player on the planet who reacts like that.

Smith has admitted that he enjoys a challenge. “I’d rather take a contested shot than an open shot any day,” he said during the Cavs championship run last year. “It’s kind of boring when you take open shots.” With that attitude, I guess it makes sense that we find Smith swimming against the current, here. Who else could miss three straight jumpers and then take a heat-check 3-pointer?

Now we’ve come to the point in this article where I need to attempt to make a segue from my tangential analysis of shot logs to the impending NBA Finals, offering some insight about what will happen during the series, maybe even a prediction of the outcome. So, here goes: I predict that at some point during the series LeBron James will miss consecutive jump shots and, subsequently, he will get a dunk. ABC play-by-play announcer Mike Breen will describe the action: “LeBron James…driving…and BANG! With the flush.” Jeff Van Gundy will respond “James. Not settling for the jumper. Gets to the rim and…gets the slam.” And Mark Jackson will chime in with “Grown-man Move.”

Next: Nylon Calculus -- Examining the rhythm of LeBron's game

At that precise moment, you’ll turn to your spouse or your drinking buddy or your child or whoever is watching the game with you and you’ll say: “I knew this would happen.” And he/she will say, “Huh.” And you’ll be glad that you read this article. Very glad, indeed. That is my prediction.