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DATA ANALYSIS
I compiled the numbers of three attempts and actually made in this graph. It is obvious that players nowadays shoot more threes than before.
Every year NBA would nominate 15 players for the All-NBA team. These players are considered the best of that year. I first generated the All-NBA players each year from the Player Stat data, and then selected their three point attempts per game. Though fluctuated over the years, it is obvious the trend of 3-pointers is going up. Moreover, Big Men, who are traditionally supposed to attack the paint, are shooting more from outside.
Next, I scraped news archives from ESPN NBA News Archives from 2003 to 2019. The text file is very huge, so I only used news in April of each year. I counted the times of 3-pointer related terms appear in the news over the years and generated this graph. The terms include: shooter, shooting, three pointer, four point play, etc. In the graph above, it is clear that after 2010, the three-related terms have increased rapidly. (except for 2013 and 2017)
It can mean that because players are shooting more three's, the news is reporting more about three's. However, the number of news reports in Aprils before 2010 is 450 on average and 750 after. This increase can also make the number of terms increase.
Above is a graph depicting the annual salaries of top 10 NBA shooters and big men from 1997 to 2017. Surprisingly, the graph shows the opposite of what I imagined. I supposed that since outside shooting is trendy now, shooters should get paid more than big men. But as it turned out, big men have always got paid more.
I notice the gap is narrowing, especially after 2015. If three pointer continues to be popular, maybe shooters will get paid more in the future. Interestingly, it seems that the salaries of these two group of players have a negative relationship. When big men's salaries increase, shooters' usually decrease and vice versa. Moreover, before 2010 most top 10 big men are "famously" unable to shoot from outside, such as Shaquille O'Neal, Marcus Camby, and Dikembe Mutombo. Recently, most top big men are also good shooters, such as Marc Gasol, Anthony Davis, and Karl-Anthony Towns. (How I selected top 10 players will be in the appendix)
I plotted three point attempts of the top big men above and found that though over the years they do not shoot as much, after 2015 the number increased drastically. More future data is needed to see if big men are really shooting more in terms of strategy. Now it does look like they earn more because they not only can grab rebounds and protect baskets but also can shoot from outside.
Click the icon to see the analysis
Next I am going to focus on one team to see whether shooting more three's has helped them win more.
The Houston Rockets are one of the pioneers in the league to use data analysis. They discovered three pointers are more efficient in terms of winning. I would like to see after adapting to shooting more three's how has the Rockets transformed.
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