Was Chris Bosh’s 1-for-18 night the worst ever?
Chris Bosh missed 17 of his 18 shot attempts last night in the Heat’s 93-89 loss in Chicago. His shooting performance was so bad that it got me wondering — historically speaking, just how bad was it?
Basketball-Reference has a ‘play finder’ that allows users to look up individual games or seasons based on a series of criteria. It only goes back to the 1986-87 season, but for our purposes, that’s probably far enough. I asked the site to generate a list of players that attempted 15 or more shots but had two or fewer makes, and list those results in order of ascending field goal percentage. The resulting list shows the very worst shooting nights over the last 25 years.
As you can see, Bosh’s 1-for-18 debacle was the third worst shooting performance in the last 25 years, and the worst FG% for any player making at least one shot. Tim Hardaway’s 0-for-17 nightmare against the T-Wolves back in ’91 was worse, but at least his team managed to win the game. (How does a team win a game when one of its players goes 0-for-17?!? Hardaway’s 13 assists probably had something to do with it.) There are some big names on this list — Jason Kidd (twice), Clyde Drexler, Karl Malone, Carmelo Anthony, Reggie Miller — which makes sense since stars are more likely to shoot 15+ times in any given game.
Playoff games are denoted with an asterisk, so Michael Finley’s 1-for-17 outing against the Spurs in 2001 is the worst postseason shooting night in the last 25 years. Mike Bibby, Miller and Anthony all went 1-for-16 in the postseason at one time or another.
But back to Bosh — since the game had a playoff atmosphere, is it an indicator of how he’ll play in the postseason? For that matter, how have Dwyane Wade and LeBron James done against the East’s elite?
Here’s a look:
EFF stands for the NBA’s Efficiency statistic, described in more detail here. It has its faults, but it’s a good number to look at when trying to get a feeling for a player’s overall performance in any given game.
Clearly, Bosh doesn’t fare as well against the top teams in the East as his efficiency is about 25% lower against Boston, Chicago and Orlando. But Wade’s performance is even worse. His 13.8 EFF against the top teams is about a 50% drop from his production against all other teams. A closer look at Wade’s game log reveals that he has been especially bad against the Celtics this season (EFF of 2.3 per game), while playing pretty well against the Bulls and Magic (EFF of 20.6 per game), so the Celtics are Wade’s kryptonite right now.
The only member of the Super Friends to raise his level of play against the conference elite is LeBron. Against Boston, Chicago and Orlando, he has played about 8% better in terms of efficiency. This also supports his case to be the league’s MVP for the third straight season (though Derrick Rose is also staking his claim).
Based on these numbers, the Heat should be concerned with how Bosh is going to fare in the postseason, but that’s been a concern with him all along. Throw in Wade’s dreadful play against Boston this season and Miami can’t be looking forward to a seven-game series with the Celtics.
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The worst happened in 1973. A guy went 1 for 23 I believe.
I’d have to say the worst goes to John Starks. He shot 2-18 in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals. It gets no lower than that.
Ha ha ha! (Oh wait, I’m a Cavs fan. Never mind . . .)
Oh what a night for bosh…I am from toronto and I just love to see when these nights happen…now he never had this bad a game in toronto but I am so happy to see that he brought some of his “toronto magic” to the game against chicago. I am also happy that miami did not pull out a win there at the end as they tried to make it close. The funny thing is they were still trying to get bosh going right until the end…he continued to miss even in the dying minutes of the game. Then it seems that Lebron followed in his footsteps taking a very quick three to try to tie the game…I mean he was lucky that he hit the back board there he was so off. I don’t want to bad mouth the raps (its hard not to these days or shall I says years) because they are my home town team town (along with the leafs….lets not go there either)but when are people going to realize that the “franchise players” from toronto are just average players (if that) on any other team and on this night way below average….look no further than Vince(carter)…case and point…does he even play anymore? You would think not you never hear about him…he brought his toronto magic to the nets, then to orlando and now to phoneix…need I say more…vince who…with the changes that may be coming to the league in the future I hope bosh ends up on a team even worse than toronto because if miami has to drop some of their heavy salary players, they will not let go of wade or lebron it will be bosh who will go to…hmmm washington or better yet to the cavs to be their franchise player and the same thing will happen to him that happened to vince…we will never hear of him again….love it 1-18…love to hate on him!!!!