Knicks play three-ball, but can't pocket win

LeBron James scored 31 points, Dwyane Wade scored 28 in his return from a sprained right ankle, and the Miami Heat beat the three-point-obsessed New York Knicks, 99-89, on Friday night in Miami. Of the Knicks' 84 shots, 43 were from three-point range, the most in the NBA this season. They connected on 18.

Support for gunning

Be selfish. Take the shot.

A major new study shows that players would likely do better if they passed less and put the ball up more often early in a possession.

"NBA players really are overly hesitant to shoot the ball in the early periods of the [24-second] shot clock," said Brian Skinner, a theoretical physicist at the University of Minnesota.

"The later players took the shot, the worse the shot was. . . . If they see a pretty good early shot, they tend to assume 'Well, I bet I can get a better one.' "

More often than not, that better one doesn't materialize, said Skinner, the study's lead author (and not the same Brian Skinner who played in the NBA).

Computer crunching play-by-play data from 4,720 NBA games - the entire schedule of four seasons - Skinner found that shot success declined by about 10 percent as the shot clock ran down.

- Inquirer wire services