Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Who are the Kings of the Mid-Range Jumpshot?

This article is for my dad, who bemoans the lost art of the mid-range shot. I have no historical data to say whether players are getting worse at the mid-range field goal, but studies have shown that players are taking fewer of them – and as basketball analytics convention shifts towards encouraging players to take more 3-pt field goals and post shots, the ability to consistently convert the mid-range shot will be de-emphasized as a valuable trait.

Mid-range field goals (which I defined as anything within the 3-pt arc aside from the region that includes the paint up to 14 feet from the baseline) still account for 29.8% of all field goals, but are only converted at a 40.0% rate. To put this in perspective, the corner 3-pt field goal is converted at a 38.6% rate. On an individual player level - out of the 142 players this season who have attempted at least 100 mid-range field goals, only 3 (Beno Udrih, Al Horford, Shaun Livingston) have shot higher than 50% from that range. 

Below are the players who I will call “Kings of the Mid-Range” because they boast the best combination of having a high percentage of field goals attempted from mid-range and a high shooting percentage from mid-range. On the scatter-plot below, a player who takes 100% of his shots from mid-range and makes 100% of his shots from mid-range would be in the upper right hand corner. I indexed everyone's distance from that corner, so a player on the corner itself would be 1.000, a player who takes 0% of his shots from mid-range and makes 0% of those shots would be 0.000. (note the axes here may be a bit skewed).



minimum 100 mid-range FGA attempted
Name and Stats
Shot Chart
1. Jason Smith
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 74.9%
FG % on mid-range: 43.6%
Index: 0.562
2. Dirk Nowitzki
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 62.6%
FG % on mid-range: 48.7%
Index: 0.550
3. Kevin Garnett
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 69.3%
FG % on mid-range: 44.3%
Index: 0.549
4. Dante Cunningham
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 66.5%
FG % on mid-range: 44.9%
Index: 0.542

5. Shaun Livingston
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 56.0%
FG % on mid-range: 50.4%
Index: 0.530
 
6. David West
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 62.7%
FG % on mid-range: 44.8%
Index: 0.527
7. Travis Wear
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 67.8%
FG % on mid-range: 40.8%
Index: 0.521
 
8. Beno Udrih
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 49.3%
FG % on mid-range: 55.0%
Index: 0.519
9. Al Horford
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 49.8%
FG % on mid-range: 54.0%
Index: 0.517
10. Kris Humphries
Perc of FGA from mid-range: 57.6%
FG % on mid-range: 44.6%
Index: 0.505


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