Since it is Christmas, and the present-opening orgy is over, I'm just hanging around waiting for the game to start. I was reading an article about the Nuggets where Hollinger mentioned that at the beginning of the season, Coach Karl did some math to show how many more points per game they would score if everyone shot at their career high FT%. So I did some math to see how a similar feat would affect the Suns. Results after the jump...

As a team, the Suns are shooting FTs this year at a .742 clip, good for a lowly 20th place in the NBA. That's a big dip from years past, when the Suns were perennially towards the top of the league in that statistic. But in years past, we were basically playing a 7 man rotation, all seven of which were good shooters. This year we're going 10 and 11 deep many nights, and not everyone on the floor is a shooter now that D'Antoni has moved on to, eh, greener pastures. We have guys on the floor for their rebounding and hustle, for their defense, and, gasp, for their own personal development.

Getting back to the idea of guys shooting at their career highs, there are a few on the Suns doing that. Nash is currently at .937, an amazing clip. The other guy shooting at their career high is Sweet Lou Amundson, whose .512 is, unfortunately, his best year yet. Technically, Robin Lopez is also shooting a career high, making 7/10 of his free throws this year, and of course Earl Clark as a rookie is at his career high. Taylor Griffin has yet to shoot a FT in the NBA.

Everyone else on the team is below their career averages, some significantly. Amar'e is only shooting at .762, far off his career best of .835 set last year. (I've ignored 05-06 where he shot 89% in the three games he played), and Grant Hill is shooting .764, off from his career high of .863.

The Suns this year are averaging a league-leading 108.4 points per game, ahead of other high powered offenses like Denver (107.9) and Golden State (106.3). After playing around in spreadsheets, the math says that if all of the Suns were following Captain Nash and shooting a career best at the line, we'd add 1.65 points per game to that average, 110 points per game.

That would have made the difference in a few games this year (Dallas and Portland come to mind).