Read on Twitter
Every season around this point of the season,one or two fanbases are trying to convince themselves that opponents missing threes at an ungodly rate has something to do with their team's defense, when it's almost always variance at work.
This works in two ways. First, the schedule. By happenstance, the Knicks have played a schedule heavily weighted towards teams that haven't had a lot of effective shooting talent, teams to the left side of this chart:
On top of, and generally more important than the schedule effects are guys just missing shots. Over a reletively short time span this is perfectly normal.
So far this season the "unluckiest" team has seen opponents make about 16 extra *uncontested* threes over what would be expected from the shooters attempting those shots, while the "luckiest" (yes, New York) has opponents running over 20 makes under expected.
We’ve taken to calling this phenomenon “Jedi defense”
All told, even considering the shooters taking the shots, Knicks opponents have shot 31.6% on uncontested 3s, just over 6.4% worse than would be expected from the collection of shooters (38.0%). This is the highest “Jedi” rating in the league (Charlotte sits 2nd at 5.0%).
Somewhat needless to say, there is no reason to expect this trend to continue, regression is very likely. This doesn’t mean NYK opponents are going to start shooting 45%, rather than regardless of what they’ve made so far, the best prediction is that 38% shooters will shoot 38%.
