Love the D'Antoni response. It's all about efficiency. Free throws are great, but whether you're a good free throw shooting team or a bad one, you're still scoring those efficiently. At the end of the day, it's a marginal difference. And all the stuff about late game, key situation, that's just an excuse for teams that screwed up situations earlier in the game. You wanna know how to win in the clutch? Be up 10 like we were last night.

The reason our offense is great this year isn't because we are a great free throw shooting team (we are) but because we are a great three-point shooting team. What kept the game in our favor last night was our ability to hit threes and, when Georgetown went zone, our ability to find the holes and hit the midrange shots (both JJ and Reinhardt had some nice ones).

Yes, it's better to make a free throw than miss, and you'd rather have a high percentage than a low one, but free throws simply aren't a very important part of our game. Sure, we're 2nd nationally in percentage, but we are #116 in makes per game because despite shooting them at a high success rate, we don't go there often enough for it to really make much of an impact on our overall offense. Far more important is that we are #24 in three-point makes per game.

There's a reason the four factors are considered the way they are. eFG% is king because it is all about making high-value shots. Offensive rebounding and turnovers are important because they give you chances to make high value shots, but less important than the actual eFG% because having the chance to make a shot isn't the same as making one. And free throw rate is at the bottom because everyone scores on those chances at a high rate, they are low-value shots, and more often than not (make or miss) give possession to your opponent to allow them a chance to make a high-value shot.