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.
NBA big men are certainly among the best in the world at defending the rim (due to selective pressures), but the highly disproportionate number of humans over 6'9" probably also has something to do with it. being able to block a shot while barely jumping really helps (i play rec ball and am taller than average, so have used this to my advantage quite a bit).
I would be curious to see the same stats in college about points per shot based on distance to hoop and distance to closest defender like he has for the NBA. I would guess there are more defensive breakdowns in college leading to more open layups or close range shots. Percentage by itself doesn't tell the whole story. Would need how closely guarded someone is, time in the game, time in the shot clock, etc. to get a true reading on what is really going on with the shooting percentages.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I think the Pacers are just pursuing a contrarian strategy that works for them. All things being equal, threes are more efficient than midrange shots, which is why teams like Houston almost never take midrange shots. But wide-open midrange shots are more valuable than contested threes, and as more and more NBA defenses give up the open midrange shot in exchange for taking away threes and layups, it makes more and more sense to take those shots, only shooting enough threes to keep the defense honest.
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.
I can see why the rockets are smart but why are the pacers dumb? They shoot a lot of midrange shots but they are a lot lot better than what people expected them to be. So why can’t we say they maximized their potential by playing to heir strengths?
At first I was going to comment on how this is probably just teams playing to their strengths e.g. If Harden played for Indiana, their heat map would probably look different. But then I looked at the stats and Indiana's 3Pt% is slightly higher than Houston's, so you're right! Oladipo needs to jack more 3's.
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 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.
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.
