Nylon Calculus: Lakers and Nuggets powered by incredible shot-making

The Lakers and Nuggets have both been powered by incredible shotmaking in their runs to the Western Conference Finals.

Anthony Davis’ game-winner in Game 2, was just the latest example of absurd shot-making that’s defined the NBA bubble. If we include the seeding games, we’ve had four buzzer-beaters and countless other high-leverage makes with time-remaining on the clock.

Shot difficulty can be hard to adequately quantify but the Shot Quality metric at PBPStats.com is one of the best measures available. It’s a measure that can be interpreted as “expected effective field goal percentage” and the model includes shot distance, angle, game time and situation and how the possession started.

The interactive Tableau below shows every player who has attempted at last 75 shots in the playoffs, charted by their Shot Quality and their actual effective field goal percentage. Anything on the right side of the diagonal line is a player who is making difficult shots, out-performing what would be expected given their shot selection.

The players farthest over expectation are players like Grant Williams, Serge Ibaka and Seth Curry — mostly finishers with low shot totals, riding a small sample size hot streak. However, if you filter down to just the highest-volume shooters you can see this Nuggets-Lakers series pop to the top.

Who has been making the most difficult shots in the NBA playoffs?

Across the entire playoffs — Davis, LeBron James, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray are the players who outperformed their shot selection by the widest margins. It’s worth pointing out that all of these players outperform their shot selection during the regular season, they are elite offensive players and they have earned that distinction by making tough shots, the kind of shots the average NBA player can’t make at the same rate. But Davis and Murray are outperforming their shot selection by more than three times as much as they did during the regular season.