APBRmetrics

Average per team 3 pt attempts per game in the league are currently up 5% this year compared to last season. All-time high of 19.5 per team per game right now. Last season it was 18.4 by the end, slightly less thru the first 15 games. Biggest year to year jump in attempts since 2007-8. A 1% pace increase explains less than 10% of the change. Will it last?


NYK at 29.1 attempts per game is higher than any team has been for a season. Houston also over 25 per game. Never been more than 2 of those in a season. Still just 12 with 20+ attempts per game, same as last season. But just 3 below 15 attempts per game now comapred to 6 last season.


(Other notes: Average offensive efficiency is a tenth of a point below last season right now. Average blocks per game at 21 year high and close to the all-time high, though there is only modest variation from 5 per game thru time.)

Hopefully these attempts are replacing two point jumpers a foot inside the circle.

Average number of 16-23 foot shots by team per game has fallen pretty steadily from 21.6 in 2007-8 to 19.6 so far this season. It was 19.9 last season. Evidence of fairly slow change in behavior.

Players however are taking 3-9 foot and 10-15 foot shots at rates near the recent time period records at Hoopdata (7 years), despite only hit about 38% of them across the league. They may not be able to stop them as easily, with many of these being aborted attempts to get to the rim. This is the reason I tend to group at the rim and short-medium mid-range shots together when evaluating shot selection and strategy choices.

Truly open short-medium mid-range shots are probably good selections but most of these shots are probably contested and near the worst shots in the game, with only contested long range shots (from 2 pt distance and maybe from 3 pt) being worse. If you have better than a 25% chance of making a contested 3 pointer than would be better than the average shot from 3-9 feet and even more preferable to a contested 3-9 footer.