Pelicans: Rebounds, Zion Williamson weren’t enough to overcome defense
By Tim Burke
New Orleans Pelicans: Free throws and 3-point shooting were awful
Next up, how did the New Orleans Pelicans shoot the ball and where did that place the Pels in the league overall? The stats in the chart below come from basketball-reference. This chart displays the overall field goal percentage, two-point percentage, three-point percentage, and free-throw percentage for New Orleans. Also, it shows the per game average, league ranking, and total attempts per shot type.
| Pelicans | FG% | 2P% | 3P% | FT% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rate | 47.7 | 54.4 | 34.8 | 72.9 |
| Rank | 7 | 8 | 26 | 29 |
| Total Attempts | 6412 | 4222 | 2190 | 1878 |
What does this mean? Well first of all the Pelicans need to start making free throws, getting to just league average could’ve been the difference between making and missing the play-in games. This goes for pretty much every team in the league, but New Orleans was second in the league in free-throw attempts this season. A successful team can’t get to the line as often as the Pels did and throw away free points.
It also means the lack of three-point shooting torpedoed this team. It’s often said the NBA has become a league where the team who makes the most threes in a game gets the win. New Orleans didn’t make or take many shots from behind the arc this year, finishing in the bottom five in both categories. Part of that can be attributed to injuries, especially in the second half of the season, but this will need to improve.
Looking at these shooting percentages got me wondering how the Pels shoot from certain spots on the floor. The stats in this chart are from Cleaning The Glass. This chart tells us how often New Orleans shot from certain distances as well as how accurate the team was from those spots. The frequency column means that the Pels ended a possession with a shot from that area on X percentage of the time, add up the rim, all mid, and all three to get 100% of the Pelicans shots.
| Area | Frequency | Accuracy |
|---|---|---|
| Rim | 41.8 | 63.6 |
| Short Mid | 17.2 | 41.4 |
| Long Mid | 9.8 | 44.0 |
| All Mid | 27.1 | 42.4 |
| Corner 3 | 8.1 | 35.1 |
| Non Corner | 23.0 | 35.2 |
| All 3 | 31.1 | 35.2 |
Some parts of this part jump off the screen to me. First off, is how often the Pels shot near the rim, nearly 42 percent of their shots come within four feet of the basket. While this isn’t all that surprising given how often Zion bullies his way into the painted area, what is surprising is New Orleans finished first in the league in shots near the rim. This is a good thing as modern basketball is about getting the most efficient shot possible and Zion rumbling to the rim is pretty efficient.
The bad news is that the rest of the New OrleansPelicans are nowhere near as efficient as Zion around the rim. On the season Zion took 81 percent of his shots near the rim and knocked them down at a 67 percent clip; only three players on the roster made a higher percentage of their attempts near the rim Steven Adams, Jaxson Hayes, and (somehow) JJ Redick.