How The Most Frequent Shots In The NBA Have Changed Over The Past Two Decades, Visualized
Over the past two decades, we've seen a lot of changes in the NBA. Most notably, we've seen a large increase in perimeter shooting.
The long-range buckets, heavily popularized by the Golden State Warriors dynasty, have been increasing at a steady pace each year. A visualization by Reddit user LongTermMetabolite of how the most frequent shots from 1997 to 2020 have changed really puts things into perspective.
If you zero in on the shots between 1997 and 2002, you can see the bulk of shooting concentrated around the basket and included baseline shots from inside the 3-point line.
Over the last five years, though, the baseline two-point shots have moved to higher-scoring shots to the top of the 3-point line.
As you can see from the infographic, the game has evolved. It's gotten quicker and smaller. But when it comes to range — it's only gotten longer.
[Via Reddit]
