About 273.7 attempts before NBA shot-making is half reliable, and 775.3 attempts before it reaches 0.7. Shot selection settles far earlier, at 10 attempts for 0.5 and 13 attempts for 0.7. Selection is a property of where a player shoots from, which stabilises quickly; making is whether the ball went in, which does not.
| Attempts | Selection reliability | Shot-making reliability |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 0.664 | 0.047 |
| 20 | 0.786 | 0.081 |
| 30 | 0.842 | 0.119 |
| 50 | 0.894 | 0.200 |
| 100 | 0.943 | 0.310 |
| 200 | 0.970 | 0.452 |
| 400 | 0.984 | 0.582 |
| 800 | 0.992 | 0.708 |
| 2000 | 0.996 | 0.828 |
The observable ceiling on this population is 2000 attempts, where selection reads 0.996 and making 0.828. These thresholds are a property of each league's own talent dispersion, not constants, which is why they differ across the 9 leagues tested.
In the NBA, corner threes convert at 38.78% against 35.39% above the break, a gap of 3.39 percentage points. A distance-only model already predicts 3.16 of that, leaving a residual of 0.23 points (SE 0.16), which is not distinguishable from zero. The corner effect is mostly the shorter shot, and the model prices it already.
Full NBA feed to hand-logged scoresheet costs 0.020 log loss and 0.024 AUC, and IMPROVES calibration (ECE 0.0122 -> 0.0025). Measured across 4 grades of feed on one fixed subsample of 250,000 shots; the full table is on the page.
No per-shot defender distance, touch time or pose. Predictive validity is untested and untestable with the data available, so no claim is made about forecasting development.
Over Expected is a basketball shot-value platform covering NBA, EuroLeague, EuroCup, Liga ACB, Lega Basket Serie A, Basketball Bundesliga, Greek Basket League, ABA Liga, WNBA.