Shot Map of Every Shot Taken in the NBA from 06-11

[haggis]

For the map above, for instance, Goldsberry divided roughly half an NBA court (from the baseline to just past the 3-point line) into 1,284 "shooting cells." Then he plotted every shot taken in an NBA game from 2006 to 2011, and color-coded the results. The areas which yielded the most points per shot appear near the red end of the color spectrum; those that yielded the fewest are at the blue end.

If you've read anything about scoring efficiency in basketball, the resulting image will not surprise you (though its elegance is striking). But it conveys far more quickly and powerfully than a set of numbers can what kind of shot distribution an NBA team should be going for, generally speaking.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/...ter_socialflow


Full Study:
http://www.sloansportsconference.com...Submission.pdf

[Chronz]

Is there any confusion why the midrange game has gone extinct?

[KnicksorBust]

I coach High School and our program stresses layups and open threes as the "Best" shots. Kids growing up these days don't get the same reps all over the court.

Although you would probably have been able to guess some of stats (Kobe shoots in the highest % of court zones, Nash and Ray Allen are effecient in the highest % of zones) it was still a great read.