ConductVision Sports

Track shooting progress beyond makes and misses

During an academy pilot, ConductVision tracks each shot's flight and the shooter's motion alongside makes and misses, session after session.

Plan a pilotRead the research
25 shots against 1,000One dot per shot. All 1,000 are the shots shooting percentage needed to rank shooters reliably; the first 25, filled, are one practice session in the study.25 shots, one session in the study1,000 shots, needed to rank shooters by percentage

Shooting percentage needed more than 1,000 shots to rank shooters reliably. A rating built from the ball's flight did better within one 25-shot session.

The research

Shooting percentage versus ball-flight ratings

In NBA data, chance explained more than half of the differences between players' three-point percentages over a season.1 In an analysis of over 22 million shots, shooting percentage ranked shooters reliably only after more than 1,000 shots per shooter.2

In that analysis, after a 25-shot session, a rating built from the ball's flight estimated shooting skill more accurately than that session's shooting percentage, with half the mean squared error.2 Another study built a rating from where the ball met the rim, using its entry angle, depth and left-right accuracy.3 That rating predicted three-point and true-shooting percentages better than simple field goal percentage.3 Among 12 players, the less the ball's speed at release varied from shot to shot, the more accurate the shooter was from three-point range.4

The published accuracy studies of video analysis, listed on the research page, measured the body, not the ball. Each pilot checks ConductVision's ball measurements against sample frames measured by hand.

Projection

What predicts shooting at the next level

In NBA data, free-throw percentage was very stable over time.1 In a study of 255 NBA players, free-throw percentage before the draft helped predict three-point percentage in the NBA.5 Even so, the researchers' model explained only 23.1% of the differences in players' NBA three-point percentages (adjusted R² of 0.231).5

Within a pilot, you can see whether each shot's flight and the shooter's motion predict your players' shooting in later sessions better than free-throw percentage does.

What the pilot measures

Progress measures

  • Makes and misses by drill and distance
  • Ball release speed, launch angle and arc height for each shot
  • Entry angle, depth and left-right position of the ball at the rim
  • Shot-to-shot variation in release height, speed and timing
  • The dip, how low the ball drops before the shot goes up
  • Knee bend on each shot
  • Change in each measure across sessions

What you get

Reports and data from the pilot

  • A progress chart for each shooter across the pilot
  • A comparison of each player's ball flight and motion with their free-throw and three-point percentages
  • Every measure as a data file, for academies with an analyst

References

  1. Franks AM, D’Amour A, Cervone D, et al. (2016). Meta-analytics: tools for understanding the statistical properties of sports metrics. Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.
  2. Marty R (2018). High-resolution shot capture reveals systematic biases and an improved method for shooter evaluation. MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
  3. Daly-Grafstein D, Bornn L (2019). Rao-Blackwellizing field goal percentage. Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.
  4. Slegers N, Lee D, Wong G (2021). The Relationship of Intra-Individual Release Variability with Distance and Shooting Performance in Basketball. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine.
  5. Berger T, Daumann F (2021). Increasing the shot at a quality draft-decision – A Bayesian approach to improve predicting three-point accuracy translation in the NBA Draft. MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

Plan a shooting progress pilot

Tell us how many shooters you want to follow and how often they practice. A ConductVision engineer replies with a proposal.

Plan a pilotResearch and accuracy