Shot Charts Overhaul — Loads of New Content!

We’re rolling out a huge update to our shot charts today that will answer most of the common requests I get for improvements. If you’re the impatient type you can check them out now, but some of the features might require a little explanation, so I’ve summarized everything below. If you have questions or comments, feel free to drop them here or hit me up on Twitter!

Interactivity

One thing I struggled with on the previous version of the shot charts was providing enough information. While the colors are great, they don’t let you see what a player’s FG% is at a specific point, unless I designated that point to be labeled. Shot volume was always a little impressionistic, making it difficult for viewers to understand exactly what proportion of shots were taken from a given area. No longer! After you find the player you want, just click on a square on the shot chart to bring up more information about that point. Specifically, you can see what percent of a player’s shots come from the five-foot area around the center of that box, and what the player’s FG% is in that five-foot region. The FG% will be weighted, such that shots near the center of the region count more than shots near the edges. Even the shot charts you see in this article are interactive!

New Leagues

Starting today, you can view shot charts for every D-League player for the last 7 years! Check out Troy Daniels, who was recently signed by the Rockets, or take a look at how former 11th overall draft pick Terrence Williams did last year.

We also now have NCAA shot charts! Scout Andrew Wiggins and the scorching hot Doug McDermott. There are two very important caveats for these charts however. First, the data is ‘rougher’ than NBA data. Locations are not tracked as accurately and this leads to some shots being slightly mis-located. Second, not every game is tracked. If you look up a player, and there is very little data, that probably means that player’s team isn’t highly ranked or doesn’t play highly-ranked teams very often. Even players on top-ranked teams may occasionally play games that are not location tracked, so a player’s chart unfortunately does not represent all of a player’s shots for the NCAA season.

Easier to Share

Probably the number one request I got was to make charts easier to share. In the old system, you could embed a chart in your blog but if you wanted to share a chart on Twitter or Facebook you had to take a screenshot. No longer! Just click the ‘Save as PNG’ button and save the resulting picture. You must allow pop-ups for this to work!

Efficiency Shot Charts

Nylon Calculus is all about helping fans understand NBA analytics better, and while a red shot chart is pretty, it’s not always the best way to analyze a player’s value. Even if a player is good at hitting a 20-foot two-pointer, that doesn’t mean it’s a good shot! Today we’re introducing a new kind of shot chart that displays a player’s efficiency from different spots on the floor. To determine efficiency, we compare the points per shot a player gets from a particular location on the floor to the NBA’s average points per shot (about 1 PPS every year).

As an example, take noted midrange specialist Serge Ibaka. As you can see, Ibaka is red hot form midrange, with FG% highs in the mid 50s or even low 60s. He’s also great around the basket but he’s not a fantastic 3-point shooter, and doesn’t really try to be, with only a few shots coming from the corners.

Now let’s look at his Points Per Shot chart. Most of that midrange turns blue. That’s because league average PPS is about 1. In order to get league average PPS from the midrange then, a player needs to shoot 50% from the midrange. That’s an extremely rare talent, with only a handful of players league-wide who can pull it off. By contrast, Ibaka’s short-range game looks even hotter now. That’s because he scores nearly 1.4 points per shot near the basket, a full 0.4 points per shot better than league average.

Try switching between FG% and efficiency with a player like Wesley Matthews, who tends to only shoot from high-efficiency areas. You’ll see a bunch of orange and beige turn bright red! This is an important way to understand why shot selection is so important. Even an excellent mid-range shooter is unlikely to be very efficient, because a large portion of his shots are inefficient. That’s not to say that midrange shots are all bad. Read Seth Partnow on why the midrange still has value or take a look at this epic Twitter debate I had yesterday.