A lot of rotisserie leagues have field goal percentage and free throw percentage as counting statistical categories.

If yours doesn’t have this category, it makes it much easier to draft Allen Iverson.

And you can pretty much ignore any of the rest of this article.

Field goal percentage is a tough one to draft for. If you draft a lot of guards, your field goal percentage tends to suffer. If you draft a bunch of power forwards and centers, you tend to thrive, but you take the hit in free throw percentage.

The one thing you need to make sure you understand about this category is how it is figured. Most of the time you get your overall field goal percentage by figuring out the total number of a shots all of the players on your team have made and divide that by the total number of shots all of the players on your team have taken. If that is how your league is figured, than it doesn’t necessarily matter if one of your player’s shoots 100% if that means that he took 1 shot and made it. Now if he got 100% by making 20 of 20 shots, then you are in great shape.

With that in mind, let me give you some of the top field goal shooters in the league…

Field Goal Percentage:

I should first not that in picking these players, I picked only players who attempted at least 400 shots (well, maybe I allowed a few to sneak through this limit). I put in perentheses how many shots they attempted and made, so you can judge who the real men are. I put these men in order of their percentages, although some of the high number of made shots might actually make a lower guy more valuable than a higher guy, but more about that later.  On with the list…

1. Shaquille O’Neal – 60% (480/800)
2. Chris Wilcox – 57.1% (257/450)
3. Eddy Curry – 56.3% (336/597)
4. Josh Childress – 55.2% (278/504)
5. Carlos Boozer – 54.9% (219/399)
6. Tony Parker – 54.8% (623/1136) Holy Smoke, Tony!
7. Gerald Wallace – 53.8% (317/589)
8. Andrew Bogut – 53.3% (323/606)
9. Dwight Howard – 53.1% (468/881)
10. Elton Brand – 52.7% (756/1435)
11. Kevin Garnett – 52.6% (626/1191)
12. Boris Diaw – 52.6% (449/853)
13. Shawn Marion – 52.5% (716/1365)
14. Shareef Abdur-Rahim – 52.5% (332/632)
15. Chris Kaman – 52.3% (369/706)
16. Yao Ming – 51.9% (467/900)
17. Primoz Brezec – 51.7% (409/791)
18. Ruben Patterson – 51.5% (327/635)
19. Brendan Haywood – 51.4% (222/432)
20. Steve Nash – 51.2% (541/1056) Nice shooting, Steve!
21. Drew Gooden – 51.2% (334/652)
22. David West – 51.2% (530/1036) Surprise free agent pickup of last year!
23. Brian Cook – 51.1% (261/511)
24. Ben Wallace – 51% (237/465)
25. Antonio McDyess – 50.9% (285/560)
26. Udonis Haslem – 50.8% (300/591)
27. Zydrunas Ilgauskis – 50.6% (450/889)
28. Kurt Thomas – 50.5% (305/604)
29. Chris Bosh – 50.5% (549/1087)
30. Pau Gasol – 50.3% (600/1194)
31. Chris Mihm – 50.1% (230/459)
32. Andre Iguodala – 50% (344/688)

I probably went deeper than I should have (400 shots is really not that high a number, just ask Kobe), but you get the idea of all the high or medium shooting players at or above 50% in field goal percentage for last year.

Pay special attention to the guards who shoot that well (e.g. Tony Parker and Steve Nash).  They can be invaluable in keeping your field goal percentage high as well as getting you categories like assists, steals, and three pointers.
Also pay attention to those players that took over 1000 shots and made a high percentage (e.g. Tony Parker, Elton Brand, Kevin Garnett, Shawn Marion).  Those will skew things in your favor even if you pick up a couple of low field goal percentage shooters.  Plus they don’t hurt when it comes to Points Scored.
And as a note, anybody at or above 48% is a good shooter.  Anybody above 45% is probably acceptable.  Any players shooting below 45% will seriously hurt your field goal percentage unless they don’t take many shots.

You should have serious reservations about taking anybody shooting close to or under 40% who scores a lot of points.  Even if you take several guys with high percentages, it may still be difficult for you to overcome the very poor shooting of a player who hits a low percentage on a high volume of shots.  I know.  I’ve tried.

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