What makes the Hawks so Good ... Sometimes

The Atlanta Hawks have some really great post players in Horford and Smith and some pretty good offensive back-court players in Johnson, Crawford and Bibby, so how does the coach decide who gets to put up shots and from what location?

Here is a breakdown of shot attempt locations for league, per 100 possesions (average of all the teams in the NBA):

And for the Hawks:

The Hawks take 3% fewer shots at the rim than the league average.  However, the Hawks take 29% or a majority of their shots from 16-23 feet away from the rim, which is 4% more than the league average.  The 16-23 feet shot is generally considered a low percentage shot with risk/reward ratio of less than say a 3PT shot.  Since we (the Hawks) take a majority of our shots from this distance, we are a jump shooting team that lives and dies by how the shots fall from this distance.  Heres how the league and the Hawks did at converting (making shots) from each location on the floor (upto 2/13/2011):

The Hawks are an above average shooting team primarily because we make low-percentage shots far more often than an average team.  We convert 44% of shots taken from 16-23ft range, which is 4% more than the league average.  We also make 44% or about 4% more shots per 100 attempts from less than 10ft from the rim when compared to an average NBA team.  

If we live and die by our long range jump shots, lets see how we fare against teams that are the best and the worst at defending these long range jumpers:

Teams take the highest proportion of their shots from the 16-23 feet against The Pacers, Spurs and the Magic, at over 23 shots out of a 100.  However, teams make about 41% of the shots taken from that range against the Pacers and about 38% against the Spurs and the Magic.  Thus presumably, the Pacers do a poor job of contesting shots from 16-23 ft range than the Spurs and the Magic.  Regardless, the Hawks should do their best against these teams (we are 4-6 games won against them, this season).  The Mavericks, Hornets and the Bulls allow opponents to convert their 16-23ft shots at the lowest rate in the league, about 35% (we are predictably 0-4 against these teams). 

The Mavericks and the Hornets play a lot of zone defense, where the defense allows some space to the 3pt shooters but can quickly close out on the mid range jump shooters.  The Pacers, Spurs and the Magic play a lot more man defense, giving some space to the mid range shooters coming off screens and pick and rolls.

It is curious though, why the Hawks lost so badly against the Magic in the 2009 playoffs.  Maybe the Magic team made a lot of adjustments and contested a lot of mid range jumpers, maybe the Hawks just did not convert the low percentage shot at the same clip.  Once I get a hold of some statistics from that playoff series, I'll post additional analysis here.  

I also wonder if the Hawks take a larger percentage of their shots from less than 10 feet against good zone defense teams.  If the mid to long range jumpers are not falling or are hard to come by, then adjustments ought to be made to allow players to get more open looks and take more shots from less than 10ft from the rim.  I'll compile that data and post here in subsequent posts.

Sources:

Hoopdata

Basketball Reference.com