Basketball players don’t need to be exciting to be good. A dunk is worth as much as a layup, and good defense doesn’t often make ESPN’s Top Ten plays. But Anthony Edwards happens to be a flashy and good player. When he’s feeling it, the basketball world notices, like when he and the Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Boston Celtics on Nov. 6.
Edwards filled the stat sheet with 38 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists against Boston while essentially taking over the final minutes of the regulation and overtime. He scored eight of Minnesota’s 13 points in overtime and strung together three straight baskets. Edwards scores in several ways, and he’s not one to shy away from a heat check.
After scoring on a bank shot earlier in the period, Edwards began a stretch of three nifty baskets with this step-back jumper:
Immediately after the Wolves forced a Jrue Holiday miss, Edwards didn’t hesitate to pull up from distance:
With the Celtics well aware of Edwards’ scoring ability, they sent a double team. Edwards didn’t care, driving in for this shot that electrified the Target Center crowd:
Edwards’ scoring and defensive efforts helped seal that victory, but not before attempting one more three-pointer:
Still, it’s unclear if these bursts of scoring are “real” or if Edwards isn’t any more likely to make his next shot after making the first one. However, that might be expected for all NBA players.
Using Stathead data, I looked at every shot Edwards has attempted this season and assigned it a value “Y” or “N,” depending on if it was a make or miss. Using something called a “running odds ratio,” we can see how Edwards fares after making or missing a shot.
There are some immediate caveats to this data set. It treats every shot as if they were all attempted in the same game. If Edwards ends a game on a miss, we don’t care if he makes his first shot in the next game. The two shots didn’t happen back-to-back, so it’s not an assessment of hot shooting like two shots from the same game.
Below is a snippet of what the data looks like:
I’ve also split the original dataset into two. One contains every shot, including layups and dunks. The other consists of only jumpers. All shots in the original dataset are sequential, apart from those at the beginning and end of games. The jumpers-only dataset could have shots that were, in reality, spread out by several attempts. But I was trying to simulate “heat checks” that are almost always pull-up jumpers. Below is a snippet of what the jumpers-only data looks like:
Each shot attempt is put into pairs of “NN,” “NY,” “YN,” or “YY.” The ratio YY/YN tells us how likely Edwards is to make his next shot after a make. NY/NN shows how much more likely it is that he makes his next shot after a miss. If Edwards is a “hot hands” shooter, the ratio of YY/YN would be greater than NY/NN.
The end ratio can be interpreted as how much more likely Edwards is to make the next shot after a make than he is to make the next shot after a miss. Lots of “YY”s imply he is a “hot shooter.” Lots of “YN”s say the opposite.
For context, a final ratio, or R value, of 1 is a player that is no more likely to make his next shot after a make than a miss. Anything above 1 suggests the player “gets hot” after a make, while anything below 1 means a make does nothing to his ability to make his next shot.
Edwards’ “Y” and “N” on jumpers are as follows:
The results could be both disappointing and encouraging. Edwards’ R value on jumpers only is about 0.86, while his full dataset is 0.77. He’s no more likely to string together consecutive makes than he is to follow a make with a miss.
There are real-world concerns here. Does any NBA player have an R value above 1? Even Stephen Curry only has a R value of 0.9 on jumpers and 0.89 on all shots this season. Three-time Sixth Man of the Year Jamal Crawford had R values of just 0.62 and 0.73 in the 2015-16 season.
While Edwards may not truly have “hot hands” (or an R value above 1), he may have one of the better values in the NBA. Edwards is always a threat to catch fire with a diverse scoring skillset.
