Opinion: NBA Should Stop Counting Full Court Shots against a Player’s Field Goal Percentage

Photo Credit: Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

NBA players are reluctant to take full court or ¾ court shots in the regular season at the end of the quarters 1, 2, and 3. Instead, they often choose to throw away the final possession of the quarter and shoot the ball just after they see the clock hit zero. Their goal is to appear to take that last second shot, while ensuring that the shot will not count against their stats—field goal percentage and three point field goal percentage. This has been happening for years now and it’s quite a bad look for the NBA, having players opting to reduce their teams’ chances of winning in favor of not hurting their personal stats.

A simple solution to this problem could be for the NBA to stop counting any shots from the opposite half of the court towards a player’s field goal percentage and three point field goal percentage. Some work may need to be done by sports data companies to go back and correct players’ field goal and three point field goal percentages of the past, but that’s a small price to pay for the added excitement that fans will have from more meaningful super deep three point attempts and makes at the end of quarters.

I liken this situation to sacrifice bunts and sacrifice flies in baseball. Those plays, when used appropriately, boost a team’s chance of winning even though the batter gets out. However, they don’t count against a batter’s batting average, even though sac flies do count against a batter’s OBP and wOBA (given the uncertainly as to whether the batter was attempting to hit a sac fly in the first place).