With the Mavericks seemingly exploding before our eyes (KNOCK ON WOOD), I thought it was time for something fun. All the talk about hacking has resurrected conversation about the differences between American and foreign big men. Conventional wisdom has us believe that American big men are more physical but less skilled. Foreign big men, on the other hand, get pushed around easily but are more adept with the ball in their hands. In the current times of hack-a-you, this means that American big men are characterized as being dunces from the free throw line, while foreign big men conduct symphonies from the same spot. To what extent are these stereotypes true? Let’s use data to find out.
The data are from Basketball Reference. I made a few important decisions about how much of it to use. First, I’m only using data starting from the 2000-01 season. While the data go as far back as 1946, I figured there were not a whole lot of foreign big men to analyze from that time period and decided to use more recent data, when foreign big men are more numerous. Speaking of which, I’m defining “big man” as a player who is classified by Basketball Reference as a center, a center-forward, or a forward-center. This excludes players who might be tall in stature but play a different role, such as Kevin Durant or Dirk Nowitzki. Also, foreign doesn’t necessarily mean European. Yao Ming and Hasheem Thabeet are also considered foreign.
Finally, and importantly, the data classify players according to where they were born. If a player was born overseas, but then spent his entire life in the USA, that player is still considered foreign by the data. Since the conversation about domestic vs international big men typically refers to where players learned their style of play, and not necessarily where they were born, this quirk in the data is slightly problematic. I didn’t spend too much time making manual adjustments, but I did move Tim Duncan, Carlos Boozer, and Al Horford from the foreign pile to the domestic pile. I chose these three because they popped up frequently on the very first page of the international players data (sorted by win shares), so I figured they represented the biggest blips. I didn’t have the patience to switch other players.
Enough. Here are the results of all free throws shot from 2000 through 2015.
| Birth country | FTM | FTA | FT% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foreign | 38,071 | 54,469 | 69.9% |
| USA | 88,136 | 130,884 | 67.3% |
It turns out there is some truth to the stereotype of foreign big men being better shooters. Over 15 years, foreign big men shot 2.6% better than domestic big men. Here’s what it looks like year by year.
FT% for big men from 2000-2015
Foreign big men have a higher FT% than domestic big men in every season except 2001 and 2010. In this respect, the Rockets have had pretty poor luck. Their one foreign big man this season was injured right before the playoffs, and their recent foreign big man trade away (Asik) bucked the trend by being a poor free throw shooter.
