About 216.4 attempts before WNBA shot-making is half reliable, and 630.3 attempts before it reaches 0.7. Shot selection settles far earlier, at 10 attempts for 0.5 and 14.1 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 | 0.663 | 0.086 |
| 20 | 0.754 | 0.090 |
| 30 | 0.804 | 0.123 |
| 50 | 0.865 | 0.212 |
| 100 | 0.926 | 0.308 |
| 200 | 0.958 | 0.485 |
| 400 | 0.980 | 0.662 |
| 800 | 0.987 | 0.728 |
The observable ceiling on this population is 800 attempts, where selection reads 0.987 and making 0.728. 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 WNBA, corner threes convert at 37.30% against 34.00% above the break, a gap of 3.30 percentage points. A distance-only model already predicts 2.04 of that, leaving a residual of 1.26 points (SE 0.57), which is 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.