Every year I try to give people the rundown on who to pick in order to get the most out of your NBA Fantasy Draft. Like in years past, I base most of my information on the stats from the previous year. After all, stats rarely lie, and the only thing that gets in the way of last years stats being a true prediction of this years stats are injuries and player movement. Players improve or get worse on their own from year to year, but not often by very much.

Check out some of my other articles if you are a newbie to the site and need more information on drafting successfully in Fantasy Basketball. The link on the right side of my page to the 5 Top Blogs is a good place to start.

And with that intro, I bring to the best and the worst guys for Field Goal Percentage in 2007.

Field Goal Percentage is as important a category as any other, but it is often neglected when selecting players. It’s also very hard to judge because someone could shoot 100% by making their only shot and have it count for very little because they just don’t take enough shots to matter compared with a whole team. That 100% is not nearly as good as having Dwight Howard’s 60.3% in scoring 1443 points over a season.

So with that caveat in place, I bring you the top tier players for Field Goal Percentage in the NBA, ordered by their field goal percentage. All of these players scored over 1200 points last year, so their field goal percentages matter.

TOP TIER

• Dwight Howard – 60.3% (highest rebounder in NBA, but 58.6% FT could kill you)
• Eddy Curry – 57.6% (61.5% FT not good)
• Amare Stoudemire – 57.5% (but remember his minor surgery)
• Carlos Boozer – 56.1% (68.5% FT not good)
• Tim Duncan – 54.6% (63.7% FT not good)
• Paul Gasol – 53.8%
• Elton Brand – 53.3% (but remember his injury for this year)
• Steve Nash – 53.2% (also excellent FT%, three pointers, and assists)

SECOND TIER

• Shawn Marion – 52.4% (always one of the top 5 Fantasy players, often #1)
• Tony Parker – 52.0% (free throw percentage improved last year)
• Luol Deng – 51.7%
• Dirk Nowitzki – 50.2% (90.4% FT one of the best)
• Gerald Wallace – 50.2% (69.1% FT not good)
• Chris Bosh – 49.6%

For these last two tiers, I will order them by points scored, because their percentages are so close as to make the percentage itself less important than the number of shots they are taking.

THIRD TIER

• LeBron James – 47.6% (69.8% FT not good)
• Carmelo Anthony – 47.6% (80.8% FT is helpful, and he is one of the top scorers in the league)
• Kevin Garnett – 47.6% (second highest rebounder — always a good choice, but how will he do in Boston?)
• Kevin Martin – 47.3% (84.4% FT very good, best sleeper of last year)
• Leandro Barbosa – 47.6% (84.5% FT very good)
• Dwyane Wade – 49.1% (80.7% FT good, always has injury problems, though)
• Jason Terry – 48.4% (80.4% FT good)
• Monta Ellis – 47.5%

FOURTH TIER

• Kobe Bryant – 46.3% (86.8% FT excellent, top scorer in the league, does everything including rack up turnovers)
• Zach Randolph – 46.7% (81.9% FT is very good, how will he do moving to New York?)
• Richard Hamilton – 46.8% (86.1% FT is very good)
• Joe Johnson – 47.1%
• Michael Redd – 46.5% (82.9% FT is very good)
• Mehmet Okur – 46.2%
• Ricky Davis – 46.5% (83.9% FT is very good)
• Rashard Lewis – 46.1% (84.1% FT is very good)
• Mike Miller – 46.0%
• Manu Ginobili – 46.4% (86.0% FT is very good)

FINAL NOTES OF IMPORTANCE

Of course, you really shouldn’t worry about anybody shooting above 45%, so although they probably won’t propel you to the top of the field goal percentage lists, sometimes players such as Antawn Jamison, Josh Howard, Deron Williams, Corey Maggette, Vince Carter, and Ben Gordon can be helpful in counteracting the ill effects of high shooting, poor field goal percentage players such as Gilbert Arenas (41.8%), Mike Bibby (40.4%), and Stephon Marbury (41.5%). And adding players above 45% also usually helps you in other categories like FT%, points, rebounds, assists, etc, without doing you any harm in field goal percentage, so make a note of them as well when making up your lists.

I have also pointed out to the side of some of the players other things that are good or bad about them, especially the free throw percentage, which will be a part of my next article. Often high field goal percentage players also have low free throw percentage, so you don’t necessarily want to pick up Dwight Howard for his FG% and rebounds unless you counteract it with several high free throw percentage guys (which I have never seen successfully accomplished, as Shaq has shown Fantasy Ballers for years).