Yeah, I've seen stuff about that, but I just think that it's strange how free throws, which, despite Abdel Nader's insistence to the contrary (just kidding. He almost looked as bad as me up there, though, lol. Ugh.), are uncontested, figure into the overall metric, so to speak, and I don't see any value in points per field goal attempt, but I'm willing to learn, haha. Like, what does that yield to any kind of analysis? It just seems rather weird, to me, to put it mildly.
Think about it this way. A team's score boils down to two things: the number of points they score per possession, and the number of possessions they get. It's that simple. You score more points per possession, you score more points overall.
Nick did a good job of explaining the math. All of this is why three-point shooting has exploded in the league in the last several years: despite the fact that players shoot threes at a lower raw
FG%, it yields more points.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but this seems like an attempt to take an almost No Child Left Behind approach to basketball, or as one size fits all kind of policy or whatever as if every player is the same, when, I'm sorry, but that has never been, is not, currently, and will never be possible, as no two players are identical. They can share similarities, sure, but this isn't a cookie cutter operation, or at least it shouldn't be, in my eyes, as it takes all of the creativity and individuality out of the game, imo, as if the sport has been reduced to operating, in a sense, from the standpoint of the lowest common denominator, so to speak.
In Nick's example, for instance, I don't think it has anything to do with efficiency. What I see is three different players with three different skillsets, but either way, each guy accounted for six missed shots, so while you can say that the guy who went 4/10 on 10 2 point field goal attempts is less efficient, I guess, I don't think that his performance is anywhere near as bad as the numbers indicate, as missed threes are more harmful, imo, owing to long shots = long rebounds = fast breaks, while such is not the case, or at least not to the severity, imo, of missed three point shots.
Plus, is player one a post player or master of the midrange game or whatever? I just don't believe that there's anywhere near enough information to make any kind of thorough analysis/final judgement, here.
Finally, I also don't necessarily agree that player two is automatically a more efficient scorer than player one. All the example showed, imo, was that the former is a better three point shooter, at least for one night, anyway, than his counterpart, who, for all I know, might be like, say, Danny Green, who is not a scorer in any sense of the word but is an excellent three point shooter. Am I making any sense, here?
I don't know, I just think that each player is unique and should be treated as such, and that they should play to their strengths. If one SG is deadly from midrange, have him take that shot, while if a big guy is a terrific post player, he shouldn't be shooting threes. Just take the highest percentage shot for you. That's all that I'm saying.