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How many makes does it take to prove you can shoot the 3?

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Douglar

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Quick summary -- Players have fluke years and change roles that affect their three point shooting. It takes a big sample size before you can expect a player to continue shooting well. One year isn't enough. Players need to shoot well for 2-3 years before you can say that they have improved as a 3pt shooter.


How Long Does It Take For Three Point Shooting To Stabilize?

http://nyloncalculus.com/2014/08/29/long-take-three-point-shooting-stabilize/

With the increase in three-point attempts in recent years it has become more important to have players who can consistently make threes. As a result it makes sense that players are probably putting more time in the gym working on their three-point shooting to add it to their skill set and make themselves more valuable. Three-point shots are high-variance shots, leading television analysts to use the phrase “live by the three, die by the three”, so when a career 32% three point shooter suddenly shoots 38% for a season, do we know that he has actually improved? How many attempts are enough to separate the signal from the noise? I decided to apply techniques used to calculate how long various baseball stats take to stabilize to see how long it takes for three-point shooting percentage to stabilize.

.....

The big takeaway from all of this is that it takes a long time for three point shooting percentage to stabilize. Players who have a good or bad three-point shooting season will probably regress to the mean and be closer to their career average the next season, assuming they are in roughly the same role. .... It just means that it’s not as simple as seeing a player’s three-point percentage increase one season and saying he is now a better shooter. If he keeps it up for multiple seasons then it’s probably safe to call it an improvement, but one season isn’t enough.
 
The article used Afflalo and Lowry as examples.

Real test would be to look at Ariza this year. Ariza went from 30% to 33% to 36% to 41% (his attempts nearly doubled this year) in consecutive seasons. This year he should be just as open with Howard and Harden drawing the attention and Parsons' usage out of the picture.
 
I would say it's roughly the same as the amount of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop..unless that stupid owl is still around...
 
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I would say it's roughly the same as the amount of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop..unless that stupid owl is still around...

I wonder how many kids broke a tooth trying to bite a tootsie pop after three licks.
 
I bit that shit on zero licks. Ain't nobody got time fuh dat.
 

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