Shot chart champions
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, August 27, 2012
The good folks at cbssports.com provide shot location data for selected games during the season. Typically, I make use of this data as a sanity check on a player’s two-point percentage. For instance, it can be useful to distinguish poor two-point shooters that take too many mid-range shots from those that just can’t finish near the rim.
Data isn’t available for every player and it’s not complete for most players - cbssports.com only has its hamsters running on about 15% of games, those involving a ranked team or a tournament game. Furthermore, the location recorded for individual shots has some error associated with it. I’m guessing it’s in the 3-4’ range. Still, one can safely distinguish a 2’ shot from an 8’ shot and a 10’ shot from a 17’ shot and that can be valuable information we can’t get without doing a lot of work.
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