The Gilbert Difference

Dave Berri looks at the Wizards' surprising resilience in the face of Gilbert Arenas' injuries. The insight that Caron Butler has been playing really, really well will surprise nobody. He does note, however, that Brendan "Haywood is simply taking more shots from the line and the field. And perhaps surprising to some, the increase in Haywood’s shot attempts has not caused his shooting efficiency to decline." And since Haywood was always a fairly efficient scorer, this has helped thus validating my longstanding decree that Eddie Jordan needs to play Haywood more. Beyond that:

Is there any evidence Agent Zero is missed? Yes, but it’s free throw attempts where we see an impact. Last year this team took 29.6 free throw attempts per game. This year the team is only taking 25.2 shots from the line each game.

That's a pretty big difference.