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
minimum 100 mid-range FGA attempted
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