Reassessing the Sticky Fingers Study – Is Passing Really Helpful?

Born a Nuggets Fan has moved to Pickaxe and Roll

When I wrote my sticky fingers post charting how many passes the Nuggets and Celtics made before shooting everyone thought, “that is nice, you certainly have a lot of free time on your hands, but we have no idea how many passes are made in an average NBA possession so this is all pretty meaningless.” 

You are right.  We need something to compare those numbers to.  Well, I have found it. 

82games.com has a study where they chart the ratio of possessions, shooting percentage and points per 100 possessions by the number of “touches” made on that possession.  (Yea, I am not the only one with free time on my hands am I?)  They did not start counting touches until the team had the ball in a “reasonable attacking position” so they did not include the cross court passes in the backcourt when bringing the ball up against pressure that would have counted as touches, but not touches.  Apparently they did include fast break possessions which might skew the numbers towards fewer touches slightly. 

They found that the number of touches per possession does not necessarily increase points per possession nor does it increase field goal percentage.  In fact, there may be a negative impact on passing the ball too frequently.   

They determined that the average number of touches per possession was two.  23% of all possessions consisted of one touch, 30% had two touches another 23% consisted of three touches, four touches were made on 13% of possessions and the last 11% of possessions saw five or more touches made before the shot. 

Field goal percentage was highest with two touches at 49.5%.  One touch was second with a rate of 49.1% made field goals.  With three touches shooting dropped down to 47.8% and after four touches it bottomed out at 44.8%.  There was a slight rebound on possessions with five or more touches as teams shot 45.7% in those situations. 

The study then questions how important touches are for getting good shots.  It looks like teams are going to get their best chance at scoring on their second touch, or after one pass.  That flies in the face of what we believe to be true, that teams should pass the ball around and move on offense in order to get good shots.   

This is bad news, right?  Has one on one play truly taken over the game of basketball to the point where passing has a negative impact on offense?   

If this were a television show I would put “To be continued…” at the bottom of the screen while the characters all have dismayed looks on their faces.  We all know what happens on the continued portion of the show.  No matter how bad things are in the first installment, things always end up OK by the end of the second show. 

Anyway, that was my way of saying here comes the good news.   

They then go on to chart touches per second and this is where we see a dynamic difference that displays the importance of moving the ball around on offense. 

When touches per second were higher than 0.25 (which means there is a pass every four seconds or less) the offense shot over 50%.  On the flip side when touches per second were below 0.25 the offense shot 44%.   

That is quite a disparity, but one pass every four seconds is not really an example of quick ball movement is it?  To go further, on possessions where a team had their touches per second above 0.45 their shooting percentage increased to 58.5%!  If a team can pass the ball every two seconds, the numbers dictate that they will see a massive increase in their shooting percentage.  However, 57% of possessions that they charted had a touches per second rate of below 0.25.   

Now in our television analogy this is where we would go to a commercial, because wait, there is more! 

They go on to look at the impact of dribbling on shooting percentage.  On shots where a player catches and shoots, or takes zero dribbles, the field goal percentage comes out to 48.4%, which is pretty solid.   

When a player dribbles once, they shoot 47.5%, which is still good, but not as good.  Think about the times you see a player dribble once and shoot.  It is either a rhythm dribble for an open shot or a longer pull up jumper.  Most times a player cannot drive all the way to the basket on just one dribble, but it does happen. 

When a player takes two dribbles and shoots they shoot 50%.  Two dribbles is usually enough to get any of these athletes to the rim or get to some open space or else they are shooting a mid to close range pull up jumper. 

Those numbers are all pretty acceptable, but when a player takes three or more dribbles things go downhill quickly with a charted a field goal percentage of 45.7.   

When you add everything together in order to have the most efficient offense possible you want an offense where no one takes more than two dribbles and the ball should to be passed every two seconds.   

Does that sound like the Nuggets? 

No? 

Well for the final kicker, guess which coach they site in the article as a coach who stresses doing something right away with the ball?  You guessed it, none other than our own George Karl. 

Keep those things in mind as you watch the Nuggets play.  How quickly are they passing?  How often does someone either hold the ball or dribble it over and over, even if they are moving around?  Does it look like George Karl is getting on the players in an attempt to get them to do something quickly with the ball? 

I hope all of this helps put the sticky fingers study into a little better perspective.  If I was any good at this I would have presented this information first and then looked at what the Nuggets were doing on offense, but hey, I am doing my best here so thanks for cutting me a little slack.

To see the full study click here.