data taken from basketball-reference.com Player Population: Older than 21 >1000 minutes played >25% from 3 A 5% correlation (R^2) is basically no correlation, which agrees with the eye test. This is relevant to the current nba draft. Jeremiah Fears shot 85.1% from the line in college, but only 28.4% from 3. Will he improve? If he has these percentages as an NBA vet, he is very unlikely to improve. How does college ft% relate to nba vet 3fg%? That's not addressed here, but nba teams are likely to know. Btw, that guy on the far right was Sam Hauser.
in one way, I disagree with the premise. Matching 3pt% and FT% for players who have been in the league for a number of years isn't what most people, myself included talk about it's looking for an indicator of how much a college player, or a limited minutes rookie, might improve in their 3 point shooting. That's the correlation people are looking for. Kris Murray shot 34.8% on three's from the college line. But he shot under 70% on FT's and that's raised a bit of a worry about his capacity for improvement. But Camara was much worse in both categories and has improve a ton in 2 years in the NBA. You may be right there is no real correlation. But what we're looking for are signs of capacity to improve but, for instance, Egor Demin shot 27% on three's while shooting 69.5% of FT's. Maybe that's an indicator, maybe not in his 1st two seasons at St. Joe, Rasheer Fleming shot 63.6% on FT's and 31.3% on three's. In his 3rd season, he improved to 74% on FT's at the same time he improved to 39% on three's. Is there a connection there?
This aligns with my post a few weeks ago - http://www.sportstwo.com/posts/5776416/ I tried to slice the data multiple ways, but always came back to the same conclusion - - Becoming a good NBA 3-point shooter is not easily learned. What the player is in college is probably what the player will be in the NBA. Sample size is of course a factor. Free-throw shooting is not a good indicator if a player can more easily learn to be a good NBA 3 pt shooter.
