Living in Germany, my options for live, high-caliber sports are limited, if I don’t want to sit outside in 35 degree rainy weather and watch soccer. As such, over the past year and a half I’ve tried to “make it work” with hockey and basketball. With hockey, the larger ice helps the game feel more open and covers up the lower level of talent a little bit. Basketball, on the other hand, isn’t helped and the caliber of play in Basketball Bundesliga is noticeably worse –from my observation– than your run of the mill NCAA game. My suspicion was confirmed by seeing that the German basketball league is ranked 8th in Europe according to the latest European Basketball League rankings.
However, in an effort to try and objectively quantify this, I’ve tried to determine what metrics someone can use to judge the overall caliber of a league. Problem is, teams generally don’t play outside of their own league (or if they do it’s in an exhibition where the objective of winning may fall in second behind “nobody gets hurt.”) In thinking of all different statistical measures available to measure quantity, there was only one that I felt had little outside influence.
The foul shot.
15 feet in the US. 15 feet, 1 inch under FIBA rules. The rim hangs 10 feet above the floor everywhere. The width of the lane varies slightly across leagues, but the setup is the same. One man, a basketball, and a shot. In theory, shooting a free throw is the same in Tuscaloosa as it is in Warsaw. Fans, ultras, or student sections in various arenas may effectively distract, but aggregating across entire leagues should even itself out.
With that in mind, I pulled the data from 2011-2016 for the European leagues I could find statistics for: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and the European super leagues (Euroleague and Eurocup). The super leagues are helpful because they’re comprised of the best teams in the other European leagues, so this could be a helpful litmus test to see the validity of the free-throws-as-a-gauge-of-talent concept. In addition, I pulled the NBA, NCAA Men’s Division 1, and after stumbling over the data by accident, the WNBA and NCAA Women’s Division 1. So let’s take a look:
| League | Country | 2015-16 | 2014-15 | 2013-14 | 2012-13 | 2011-12 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WNBA | USA | 79.5% | 77.9% | 78.1% | 76.3% | 77.0% | 77.8% |
| Liga ACB | Spain | 76.7% | 75.9% | 76.5% | 77.1% | 74.4% | 76.1% |
| NBA | USA, Canada | 75.7% | 75.0% | 75.6% | 75.3% | 75.2% | 75.4% |
| Eurocup | Europe | 75.4% | 75.4% | 74.8% | 75.2% | 73.9% | 74.9% |
| BBL | Germany | 76.3% | 75.2% | 74.6% | 74.7% | 73.6% | 74.9% |
| Lega Serie A | Italy | 72.9% | 73.8% | 76.2% | 73.6% | 74.9% | 74.3% |
| Euroleague | Europe | 74.6% | 73.9% | 73.6% | 73.5% | 74.9% | 74.1% |
| NBA D-League | USA | 74.5% | 73.1% | 73.8% | 72.9% | 73.9% | 73.6% |
| LNB Pro A | France | 73.4% | 73.1% | 72.8% | 72.7% | 73.0% | 73.0% |
| Greek Basket League | Greece | 71.5% | 70.0% | 70.7% | 70.9% | 71.9% | 71.0% |
| NCAA Men’s D1 | USA | 69.8% | 69.2% | 69.8% | 69.3% | 69.1% | 69.4% |
| NCAA Women’s D1 | USA | 69.7% | 68.9% | 69.4% | 69.0% | 68.9% | 69.2% |
Overall, it seems that no real correlation exists. Yes, Spain is at the top as one would expect, but the EuroCup, the second tier of pan-European basketball, is nearly a full point over the level above it, Euroleague. Germany, 8th in the FIBA rankings, sits second for the European leagues. Greece, third in the European league rankings, comes in dead last for the professional leagues. Here it is in graphical form:
So it seems, surprisingly to me, that the answer is no. There is no real correlation between free throw percentage and “perceived caliber of the league” by my own subjective standards (and the somewhat less subjective FIBA rankings). After looking at this data, I went back to look at the box score for the game I attended, and noticed that the losers still managed to shoot 65% on their 2 pointers. It was the 17 turnovers (25 total for the game) that made the game ugly.
But the table itself seems to create more questions than answers (and an observation or two):
- The WNBA has the best free throw percentage in all of basketball?
- The NBA in 2015-16 was a full four percentage points worse than their female counterparts?
- The Spanish league outshoots the NBA?
- NCAA Basketball free throw shooting is worse than every European league (not too surprising).
- The difference between men and women in the NCAA is practically nothing.
The real takeaway, to me, is how impressive the free throw shooting is for women. The jokes about “strong fundamentals” are not without merit, it seems. The difference between men and women from the charity stripe at the college level is indistinguishable. At the professional level, a divergence happens. I tend to think that it’s not “Women are better free throw shooters than men” but rather “The NBA just plain sucks at free throw shooting.” With the data at hand, one would expect the NBA’s free throw percentage to be around 77-78%.
Why is the NBA so bad at free throw shooting?
I don’t have the answer for this. I have a few theories, that I may expand on in the future:
- Height is valued and easily found within the NBA, and taller players are worse at free throws. Every NBA team has a “big man” or sometimes two or three big men. In college, it is rare for a team to have a seven footer. My assumption that taller players are worse at free throws is more anecdote-driven than fact driven, but I would assume it’s true.
- Free throw shooting isn’t valued as a whole in the NBA’s “superstar” culture. Can you name who led the NBA in free throw percentage in 2015-16? You can, but it’s only because you just randomly guessed Steph Curry, who hit 90.7% this year. Steph won in 2015 too. 2014? NBA journeyman Brian Roberts. 1
- The prevalence of “Hack-a-Shaq” has grown over the past few years, where teams will foul notoriously bad free throw shooters. This is corroborated by the fact that free throw percentage has dropped quite a bit (from the 78% we expected above to around 75%) since 2005.
In short, I’m not certain why the NBA shoots so terribly, and this exercise has shown that there is no clear tie between free throw shooting –in my opinion what should be a clear indicator of basketball ability across all levels– and talent. In addition, it seems only fair to give credit where credit is due: when I pulled the women’s basketball data, I expected it to lag the men. I was impressed when the WNBA soundly beat the men’s leagues, and that in college the level was so similar. So next time someone is talking about how terrible women’s basketball is, feel free to refer them to this chart.
In the mean time, I’ll try to figure out a better way to quantify how bad German basketball is.