I noticed the Blazers shot a ton of FT’s in the first two games. I wondered if this team is expected to shoot a lot more FT’s this year. FTR (free throw rate) is just free throw attempts divided by field goal attempts. Blazers Free throw rates: 2020-21 0.238 2021-22 0.247 2022-23 0.300 expected That’s a big jump! How I calculated “expected” Get each player’s FTR for the past three seasons (not including this year) Get the weighted average of those FTR’s weighted by shot attempts this year. Caveats: Free throw rate depends on offensive style. Blazers style may or may not be as conducive to drawing fouls as the past seasons FTR’s I used in the calculation. There is a synergy in FTR. If player X plays with other players with a high FTR that will in turn raise his FTR since he will spend more time playing in the bonus. Ant is dragging this expectation way down. He is a large portion of our shot attempts and has a recent FTR of 0.154. If he can improve this the result would be even higher.
The difference between the best offense in the league last year and the 23rd best offense on a points per possession basis was 0.06. So I mean, would you say going from 23rd best to 1st best is a “big jump”?
