
Assessing Shooting Performance in NBA and NCAA Basketball - lil_tee
http://toddwschneider.com/posts/nba-vs-ncaa-basketball-shooting-performance/
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neovive
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.

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m_ke
Zone defense and the 3 seconds rule have much more to do with this. Zone is
much more common in college and seems to explain the stats because 2-3 gives
up the high post and 3s on the wing to protect the paint.

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awad
It's harder to run zone in the NBA for many reasons, not the least of which
even a bad NBA shooter is a pretty good shooter when they have room to get a
shot off. Given the shot-heavy nature of today's game, you'd be hard-pressed
to pull off zone against a good chunk of the league.

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m_ke
Yes, I just stated the fact that zone defense is much more common in college
basketball and that it might explain the disparity in shooting percentages at
different distances.

Zone was forbidden in the NBA for a long time and, as you said, even now it
doesn't make much sense to run it at this level because of talent, 3 seconds
rule and the distance of the 3 point line.

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minimaxir
I wrote a similar post on the same large NCAA dataset, focusing more on
positional heat map data visualizations:
[http://minimaxir.com/2018/03/basketball-
shots/](http://minimaxir.com/2018/03/basketball-shots/)

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:
[https://i.imgur.com/8Ar0J2W.png](https://i.imgur.com/8Ar0J2W.png)

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clairity
nice! would have loved a little more detail in your conclusions section, but
it's neat to see how my basketball intuition matches/mismatches your data.

one analysis that would be cool is an effectiveness chart of the mix of shots
for each team/game. i suspect made percentage is correlated to the mix of
shots (3's vs. layups vs. mid-range for example).

if you're a guard-heavy 3 shooting team, then defenders can adjust to gaurding
the 3 to force lower-effectiveness mid-range shots. the question is whether
that's an effective strategy, because at some point, the defense will have to
start gaurding for the drive too, which loosens up the 3's again.

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exogeny
More than anything else, this article tells how smart the Rockets are and how
dumb the Pacers are.

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.

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ssharp
I can't wait to see how Houston's style holds up in the playoffs -- defenses
will be less forgiving and 3 point shots are high variance. Their offensive
rating took a clear dip in the playoffs last year and I suspect the same could
happen this year, which would suggest their offensive style is not ideal.

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philwelch
I think the addition of Chris Paul will make a big difference. You need more
than one star to contend in the playoffs, especially in the West.

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samfisher83
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.

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rajacombinator
I’d say it’s more like defense is frowned upon ever since the Lebron euroflop
era began. No need to post up when you can just bull rush the rim and get and
an and-one every play.

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m_ke
[https://www.sportingcharts.com/dictionary/nba/hand-
checking....](https://www.sportingcharts.com/dictionary/nba/hand-
checking.aspx)

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tud11or
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.

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stevenking86
Great stuff. Well explained.

