Quote Originally Posted by TheSultan View Post
Do people not understand the FT point? It's not that free throws don't matter. It's that they matter less than other factors.

Look at last night's game for instance. If MSU shoots their normal FT% (45% last night versus about 60% for the season), they would have scored three more points.

They could have accomplished the same three points by making one additional three point shot, which would have lifted their eFG% by about 2%. (From about 49% to 51%.) If they would have reached their season average in eFG% (54%), they would have scored about 8 more points.

Put this another way. Say that Marquette as a team shot free throws as well as their top free throw shooters (Rowsey and Reinhardt at 96%). To accomplish this, they would have had to raised their FT% by 15 percentage points and would have scored about 33 more points. They could also have scored those same 33 points by raising their eFG% as a team from 57.8% to about 60.4%.

Small variations in eFG% have a much greater impact on points scored than FT%. You have to increase FT% by HUGE percentage to come close to accomplishing what seemingly minor increases in eFG% can accomplish.
All true, but missed FTs (especially front ends of on-and-ones) at the end of a game can truly have major significance in the outcome of a game. The real issue there is that you give the other guy possession of the ball on top of missing scoring opportunities. Hard to measure that. Have seen it time and again over the decades. Stats be damned in that case.