Skip to content
Courtside

2025-26 regular season

Shot quality

Shot selection: how many points a player's shots are worth before anyone shoots them. Shot making: how many more (or fewer) he actually scores.

Reading it: +5 shot making means 5 more points per 100 shots than an average shooter would score on the same shots. +0.05 shot selection means each shot is worth 0.05 more points than the league's typical shot.

Highest shot making · centers

4 players with 800+ shots · league 1.09 points per shot
#PlayerShot makingMakingShot selectionSelectionPts per shotPPSExpectedxPPSShotsFGA
1Nikola JokicC · DEN+18.398th-0.03722nd1.241.051134
2Jalen DurenC · DET+11.790th+0.09290th1.301.18803
3Karl-Anthony TownsC · NYK-4.732nd+0.06784th1.111.161032
4Bam AdebayoC-F · MIA-8.220th-0.01439th0.991.081145

Percentiles are among all players with 200+ shots. Tap a player for his shot chart in the Quality view.

How this works

The method

Every shot gets an expected make chance from a logistic regression fit on 219,152 2025-26 regular-season shots. It uses only what the play-by-play records: distance (2 ft steps), two or three, corner three, paint or midrange, shot type (layup or dunk, jumper, floater or hook), fourth quarter or overtime, the last 24 seconds of a period, and home or away.

Expected points = make chance x 2 or 3. Shot selection is a player's expected points per shot minus the league's (1.091). Shot making is actual minus expected points, per 100 shots. Players need 200+ shots to be ranked. Free throws are not included.

The test

  • Fit on 175,364 shots, tested on 43,788 shots from 246 games it never saw (a random 20% of games).
  • AUC 0.644 (0.5 is a coin flip, 1.0 is perfect). A zone-only average scores 0.632.
  • Log loss 0.653 vs 0.659 for zone only and 0.692 for one league-wide FG% (lower is better). Brier score 0.231.
  • Test games: league FG% 47.3%, mean predicted 47.0%.
  • All shots: 239,129 actual points from field goals vs 239,153 expected (+0.01%).
30%30%40%40%50%50%60%60%70%70%80%80%Group 1: predicted 32.7%, actual 32.2% (4071 shots)Group 2: predicted 35.0%, actual 35.9% (3336 shots)Group 3: predicted 35.9%, actual 37.3% (3123 shots)Group 4: predicted 37.6%, actual 38.1% (6971 shots)Group 5: predicted 40.8%, actual 41.9% (4391 shots)Group 6: predicted 43.4%, actual 43.6% (4375 shots)Group 7: predicted 45.6%, actual 45.2% (4251 shots)Group 8: predicted 56.7%, actual 55.7% (4334 shots)Group 9: predicted 65.4%, actual 65.1% (4029 shots)Group 10: predicted 73.7%, actual 75.1% (4907 shots)Predicted make chanceActual make rate
Test shots split into ten groups by predicted chance. Dots on the dashed diagonal mean the predictions match reality.

What it cannot see

  • How close the nearest defender was. A wide-open three and a contested one look the same.
  • Play type (catch and shoot, pull-up, post-up, putback) and the shot clock.
  • Who the shooter is. That is on purpose: the gap between actual and expected is the shot making.
  • Fouls and and-ones, so drawing contact is not credited here.
  • Playoff defense: on 2025-26 playoff shots it predicted about 4.5% more points than were scored.

Shot making is noisy: over 300 shots, luck alone moves it by about 6 points per 100 either way.