Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball

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:&#x2F;&#x2F;minimaxir.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;basketball-shots&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;minimaxir.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;basketball-shots&#x2F;</a><p>There&#x27;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&#x27;s a quick new visualization of the Distribution of Basketball Home Team Points at Each Minute of NCAA Games, by Season: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;8Ar0J2W.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;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&#x27;d like to see the heat charts for the Raptors last year compared to this year. I&#x27;d imagine to see a really noticeable difference in much more threes taken this year.

Great stuff. Well explained.