Some HotZones data to work with
OK, here’s some of the HotZones data I promised. I’ve uploaded the team by team data to Swivel - offensive data from 03-04 to 06-07, and defensive data from 03-04 to 06-07. You should be able to download each as a .CSV file and easily import them into a spreadsheet or database.
I’ll have more analysis later, but for now here’s a quick look at how frequently and how well teams shot from different distances.
League percent of FGA taken from each distance:
0-8 ft 8-16 ft 16-24 ft 24+ ft
------ ------- -------- ------
2003-04 40.6% 18.0% 22.9% 18.5%
2004-05 40.5% 16.4% 23.7% 19.4%
2005-06 41.1% 15.2% 23.7% 20.0%
2006-07 41.3% 14.7% 23.0% 21.0%
------- ------ ------- -------- ------
Total 40.9% 16.1% 23.3% 19.7%
League field-goal percentage by distance:
0-8 ft 8-16 ft 16-24 ft 24+ ft
------ ------- -------- ------
2003-04 53.7% 37.7% 38.8% 35.1%
2004-05 54.6% 38.3% 40.0% 36.0%
2005-06 55.3% 39.0% 40.5% 36.2%
2006-07 56.3% 39.6% 40.4% 36.2%
------- ------ ------- -------- ------
Total 55.0% 38.6% 39.9% 35.9%
The potential trends that pop out to me are the decline in shots being taken from 8-16 feet and the increase in shots from 0-8 feet and 24+ feet. As far as FG% by distance goes, teams seem to be shooting better from both 0-8 feet and 8-16 feet.
You can see that a lot of shots are taken from 0-8 feet. This is where 82games’ distance breakdowns are useful, as their categories of dunks, tips, and close shots provide divisions within 8 feet (some of the shots they classify as jumpers are also within 8 feet).
Another thing to note is that 24+ feet FG% differs slightly from three-point percentage because the HotZones data excludes shots from beyond half-court.
For reference, here are league-wide boxscore stats by season from Basketball-Reference.
The league is a lot of datapoints and the trends seem pretty clear and match perception of game and game strategy but still how statistically significant are the changes? I assume pretty strong? Look forward to hearing more of your analytic findings.
Comment by Mountain — November 23, 2007
I don’t put much truck in statistical significance because I feel it’s an arbitrary and black and white cutoff, but I should have listed the number of attempts I was looking at for each zone grouping (from which you can calculate significance at any level you like). Here are those numbers -
Total FGA by distance:
0-8 ft 8-16 ft 16-24 ft 24+ ft ------ ------- -------- ------ 2003-04 76917 33990 43443 35008 2004-05 79859 32429 46652 38198 2005-06 79630 29473 45937 38783 2006-07 80715 28730 45017 41108Comment by Eli — November 26, 2007
I am curious why the NBA split the further distances with 24 ft when the NBA 3 pt line is at 23′-9″. Maybe they just want to round the distance. 3″ doesn’t make that much difference, but technically, the 16-24 ft group could include 3 pt shots.
Is there any distance data associated with the shots used for the Hot Zones?
Comment by TexasEx — April 29, 2008
I’ll have to go back and check, but I’m assuming they just rounded, and that all shots behind the three-point line were classified as 24+ ft.
There is not distance data for specific shots within each zone. NBA.com records that kind of data and uses it for its shot charts, but it’s not in the HotZones database.
Comment by Eli — April 29, 2008