How to analyze NBA league trends
applied to 3 point shots.
This webpage aims to help basketball analysts, fans, and researchers understand evolving trends in the NBA in context of the 3-point shot, and Steph Curry. Through this website, you will learn about how Steph Curry has affected 3 point shots, and the NBA, as well as how to do further research in new areas.
We can begin our analysis with looking at overall trends in the NBA of the 3 point shot, where we can clearly see that it has been on the rise over time as overall shooter accuracy rises, with a significant spike as Steph Curry comes to fame and rises through his legendary shot. We see a clear jump at around 2015, where he had distinctive success.
To further investigate this example of 3 point trends in the NBA, we look at the key player in our analysis, Steph Curry, specifically in relation to the distance he shoots from. As is visible in the data, he normally shoots from farther away than the league average, indicating a preference for bomb shots and long distance. We can therefore extrapolate that this playing style might be based on what is most advantageous for his smaller build. In his role, his ability to shoot from farther helps disarm the defense who might be taller and stronger.
Finally, we look at the overall success of his shot, in a graph that plots the number of points earned against 3 point percentage, to showcase his true efficiency. This efficiency is what inspired widespread change in the NBA, as his success was repetitive, predictable, and consistent, for a shot that was at the time considered lucky. This approach of treating the 3 point shot like a standard and staple play changed the way in which the NBA as a league approaches shots, as seen in the first graph. Steph's dominance is clearly demonstrated in this graph.
3 Website Sources
NBA.com is a central hub for pure statistics on players, teams, and for our interest, the league as a whole. This data is presented in largely tabular formats, for the user to parse through individual numbers. Below are some images from the league section of their statistics portion.
Looking at data in a tabular format allows us insight into specific player statistics, not overall league trends, but compiling this into graphs to demonstrate a trend is what enables full league analysis. Furthermore, taking individual player statistics allows us to inspect individual capabilities when developing reasoning for star players changing the league.
While examining shot charts to look at how shooting styles affect the league, we can analyze spatially where and how certain players are playing, and combine or overlay these to look at overall areas of interest of where generally players are shooting from. This analysis would be enabled by compiling NBA.com shotcharts.
StatMust holds more numerical data that could be key in examining players and teams to form overall league trends, and overall analyze how the league is changing due to individual players. This website is a very user friendly interface in which you can comb through individual player statistics easily, and visualize many of the rankings clearly.
Using statistics like these enables you to look at individual players and easily navigate through profiles that are more visual than NBA.com tables. These numbers are also broken up very easily to enable the visitors of the website to find specific player statistics.
Basketball reference is an easy way to find data across the entire league, and to find real trends in league data. Often most charts online are extrapolated from Basketball reference data and therefore enabled by this site. Overall this site is useful to people searching for data in its wide range of specific data and numbers.
Looking at wins and losses of teams helps examine patterns of dominance and strength among league trends, and plotting those against time over many years in order to properly develop real trends in league improvements and changes.
Final Analysis and Instructions for Examples
In order for users to properly make use of these sites and sources in order to analyze NBA data, it is important that they consider how to best leverage each unique form of data. Shot charts and other visualization are helpful for creating visual representations of distance from the basket when shooting, which I utilized while analyzing the impact of Steph Curry on the 3 point shot and league shooting strategy as a whole, and raw numbers and data can be turned into trend lines and compared in order to provide visual insight into numerical and tabular trends. Overall, leveraging these sources to find trends, and supplementing that with online searches for graphical representations is the best way to properly research league trends, and how specific players impact them. In my example of the impact of Steph Curry on the NBA and its strategy, I used tabular data to notice higher numbers in distance, and followed that up by looking for graphs that cited NBA.com and the tables in which I had noticed those patterns. This system could be applied to any form of research about a league trend.
Source: Basketball-Reference
Source: 
Source: Jack Neubecker
Stephen Curry Player Shot Statistics
Player Shot Charts also offer visual insight into playing styles
Kevin Durant Game Statistics
Overall Win/Loss Statistics