As a basketball fan, I love this kind of analysis. As mentioned in the article, I think the defensive skill of NBA players is a big reason for the differences in accuracy within six feet. For many NBA players, it's much easier to take a 7-12 foot shot than to challenge the taller/stronger players that defend closer to the rim. On average, the "rim defenders" in college aren't as strong, making it easier to score on dunks and lay-ups.
I wrote a similar post on the same large NCAA dataset, focusing more on positional heat map data visualizations: <a href="http://minimaxir.com/2018/03/basketball-shots/" rel="nofollow">http://minimaxir.com/2018/03/basketball-shots/</a><p>There's a lot of interesting conclusions that can be found from play-by-play time series data (the NCAA dataset also on BigQuery has data since 2009). Here's a quick new visualization of the Distribution of Basketball Home Team Points at Each Minute of NCAA Games, by Season: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/8Ar0J2W.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/8Ar0J2W.png</a>
More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how dumb the Pacers are.<p>Also, FWIW, Sportradar tracks location with an iPad application that they either use in-arena via a trained scorer or inside of their HQ in Minnesota.
Looking at the data a post player less than 3 feet should from the goal should be more efficient than a 3 pointer based on points per shot, but post play is pretty frowned down upon now.
I'd like to see the heat charts for the Raptors last year compared to this year. I'd imagine to see a really noticeable difference in much more threes taken this year.