At some point in the past, I remember reading a stat that Jamal Crawford is the all-time leader in 4-point plays. For those not familiar, a 4-point play can occur if a player gets fouled on a successful 3-point play attempt. The player would then have to convert the ensuing free throw to make it a successful 4-point play.
Since I read that stat about Crawford years ago, several players could now be getting close to his record, and possibly even have surpassed it. Harden, Curry and Durant all come to mind. The problem is that I can’t find that stat anywhere, which is quite surprising. What I’m actually looking for is the record for most unconverted 4-point plays (in which the player misses the free throw), but I can’t even find a running tab on successful ones. Can anyone help?
According to interbasket.com, Crawford has 54 four-point plays in the regular season, followed by Harden at 36.
I looked on basketball-reference and they don’t appear to have a category for 4 point plays. It might be buried in play-by-play data but would need someone to get that dataset and run a search query.
And it doesn’t seem like there is a full set of play-by play until sometime after 1995.
There is this piece from 82games in 2006 about “And 1” plays.
There also appear to have been 5 or 6 six point plays. (One from 1995 that doesn’t have play by play it seems according to the poster, hence my earlier comment about the data set.) All involve technical fouls, but not all seem to involve 3 point shots.
Yeah, that interbasket piece is old now. Very weird that this stat isn’t tracked somewhere, especially because it seems to have been tracked in the past.
I am guessing that basketball statistics have moved from simple box score totals and counting to more advanced win share and rate stats. And the relevance of the play (or really any single play) has diminished alongside.
Basketball reference does seem to have all the play by play from 1996 on, so someone with some search query/SQL magic could get the answer. (Find all 3 point shots followed by an immediate free throw by the same player or something)
If there’s a podcast that does the basketball equivalent of Effectively Wild (who often are asked and answer odd-ball statistics questions) that would be an alternative to doing it yourself.