One mistake I think a lot of folks are making when it comes to NBA draft discourse is looking for shortcuts.
Shortcuts are great when you’re driving in a car. They’re not so good when you’re scouting NBA draft prospects.
Lately, it’s become a trend for people to use free throw percentage (FT%) as a shortcut for projecting how well draft prospects will be in the NBA as 3-point shooters.
To be fair, FT% is a good indicator for shooting projection. In the chart below, we see a few examples of prospects who weren’t great 3 point shooters as freshmen (or overseas during their pre-draft season) but their FT% being as high as it was, was an indicator that they were a better shooting prospect than their raw 3 FG% indicated:
The mistake some folks (specifically on Draft Twitter) are making is putting too much emphasis on FT% when it comes to shooting projection.
People saw examples like Edwards, Maxey, Doncic, Hield and mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that 3 point FG% is meaningless – just look at the FT% and that will tell you how good of a shooter they’ll be! Just look at FT%, it’s that easy! We don’t even have to watch any games..just look at the FT%, plug the numbers into a formula and voila, there’s your draft board!
Sounds so simple, right?
Wrong.
Jaylen Brown shot 65% from the FT line (along with a lower 3 FG%) in college but has gone on to be a good 3-point shooter in the NBA, even competing in the NBA 3-point Contest and hitting some big 3’s to help the Celtics win the 2024 NBA championship.
Brown’s teammate on that championship team, Al Horford, is another example of a guy who shot poorly from the FT line in college but ended up being a good 3 point shooter in the NBA.
Speaking of the 3-point contest, Joe Harris won it in 2019. But he was also a poor FT shooter in college.
Another member of the 2024 Celtics championship team – Jrue Holiday shot just 72.6% FT in college (and just 30% from 3) but developed into a good 3-point shooter in the NBA.
Nikola Jokic, the 3x NBA MVP and NBA champion has been a good 3 point shooter in the NBA but he (like Jaylen Brown) shot just 65% from the FT line overseas during his pre-draft season.
Lamelo Ball is another example. He had low percentages (27% from three and 70% from the line) in his pre-draft season, yet he’s developed into a good shooter in the NBA.
For this year’s class, an example could be Rutgers’ Ace Bailey. He shoots a low FT%, 67% so far during his freshman season. However most people seem to think he’s a very good shooting prospect, due to the high 3 FG% (around 38%), along with high volume and high efficiency on 2-point jumpers and good 3 point shooting in high school. This goes to show that freshman year (or pre-draft season) FT% is not the end all, be all for shooting projection.
There’s also a few examples where a prospect had a very good FT% during their freshman season (or pre-draft season) but actually did not end up being a good three point shooter in the NBA. A prime example is Jaden Springer. He’s only shooting 25% from 3 for his NBA career. The shooting struggles is part of the reason why both the Sixers and now the Celtics have traded him. Springer shot 81% from the charity stripe in college.
There’s also Julian Phillips. Only shot 23.9% from 3 as a freshman at Tennessee. But folks saw the crazy high FT% he had in college (82.2%) and thought that automatically meant he’d be a good shooter in the NBA. That has not been the case though, as he’s a career 31.8% shooter from 3 in the NBA.
Oregon’s Kwame Evans Jr was getting lots of draft buzz heading into this season, as a potential 1st round pick in 2025. He shot 79.5% from the FT line as a freshman last season, so many folks thought his 3 FG% (which was only 26.7% last season) was going to jump way up as a sophomore. But that hasn’t happened. In fact, his 3 FG% has gotten worse this season (down to 21.9%). His FT% has also dipped (down to 72.9%) and he’s fallen off draft radars.
Nikola Topic shot just 30.6% from 3 during his pre-draft season last year. But he shot 87.8% from the FT line. On paper, sounds like an amazing shooting prospect with how high that FT% is, right? Not necessarily.
When you actually watched Topic’s film, it’s pretty clear that his shot needs to be tweaked a bit. He has a low release point, as well as a slow release – along with other issues. Plus he doesn’t seem to be very confident in his three ball, as there were a few times during games where he passed up open looks.
Then there’s Boguljub Markovic (eligible for the 2025 draft). He’s shooting 80.4% FT along with 38.3% from 3 at age 19 in the Adriatic League (same league and same team that Jokic played for before the Nuggets). So he’s an elite shooting prospect, right? Not necessarily.
When I watch his film, I just can’t really buy into the shot that much – certainly not as much as the high FT% suggests I should.
When I watch the film, his touch is just not very good. I’m often seeing questionable touch on shots near the rim. But especially on 3’s – so many times when he misses 3’s they’re not soft misses. Usually when he misses, the ball will slam off the rim pretty hard and go flying far away from the basket.
And these ‘hard slam misses’ often come when he’s wide open.
His form is kind of stiff and square, too.
The bottom line? FT% is often a helpful indicator for shooting projection. But it is definitely not the be all, end all metric for it. We should be careful to not place too much emphasis on FT% when projecting a prospect’s shooting.
There’s no silver bullet. There’s no singular stat that can project who will shoot it well in the NBA and who will not.
There’s no shortcut or easy button – unfortunately.
While there’s no silver bullet, shortcut or easy button for shooting projection, perhaps the best indicator is 3PA volume. The metric I like to use for 3PA volume is 3PA / 40 Minutes, because it’s easy to pull off Sports Reference for college players, and fairly easy to calculate manually using the data from RealGM for international players.
Let’s have a look at some shooting data for prospects in their freshman season (for Butler it’s sophomore year because that;s when he enrolled at Marquette) or pre-draft season for overseas players:
At least based on the data in this chart, the magic number seems to be 4. Players who were at 4.0 or higher for 3PA / 40 Mins ended up being good shooters in the NBA, while players who were under 4.0 were not.
There are some exceptions for that as well though. Not pictured in that chart were Kawhi Leonard, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and James Harden, who were all under 4.0 but ended up being good shooters in the NBA. Although, to be fair, Leonard and SGA are moreso mid-range assassins, while Harden just barely missed the cutoff (3.7 3PA / 40 Mins as a freshman). Plus, Harden’s freshman year of college was a long time ago – the 3 point shot was less emphasized than it is now. 3.7 3PA / 40 Mins was probably pretty high back then.
There’s also Josh Giddey and Giannis Antetokounmpo, who were (barely) above the 4.0 mark yet have not (yet) really been consistently good shooters in the NBA.
So while 3PA volume is perhaps the best indicator for shooting projection, even that metric has some exceptions.
One other metric that should be discussed is Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins. This is a good indicator because in general, unassisted 3PA are harder to make and more impressive when a player makes them than assisted 3PA.
It doesn’t take as much skill to just stand there in the corner and hit open catch and shoot 3’s. It takes much more skill to bring the ball up the floor vs defensive pressure, come off a high screen, read that the defender went under the screen, pull up off the bounce and nail the 3.
Plus, NBA teams are getting smarter these days and they’re trying harder to prevent good 3 point shooters from getting open looks. More and more, we’re seeing shooting specialists like Sam Hauser, Buddy Hield and Duncan Robinson get “run off the line”. Opposing defenses are extending their defense way out on these guys, taking away their 3 point shot and forcing them to put the ball on the floor.
So that’s the other reason why Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins is a helpful stat. Because it’s no longer good enough to just be a spot up shooter who can’t create anything off the dribble. Opposing teams are making those guys put the ball on the floor. And if they can’t do it, then they’re almost unplayable.
Luckily, Barttorvik makes it somewhat easy to calculate this metric. I simply take their total number of 3PM and % of assisted 3PA from Barttorvik. Then I google search “what is percent of “. Then I plug the numbers in. So if they made 60 3’s, then 60 goes in the Google search after the word “of”. And if Barttorvik says that 70% of their 3’s were assisted, that means that 30% were unassisted so I plug 30 into the Google search, which would now read, “what is 30 percent of 60”. I hit enter and Google gives me the answer.
Then I look at the total number of minutes they played on Sports Reference (for NCAA players) or RealGM (for international players) and use my calculator to figure out what their Unassisted 3PM /40 Mins is. All players play a different amount of total mins and different amounts of mins per game so using per 40 mins in this case makes it fair.
Looking at the 2025 draft class, some of the players who rank very highly in Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins are Kasparas Jakucionis, Tahaad Pettiford, Boogie Fland and Dylan Harper (so they’re likely better shooters than other metrics might indicate). Meanwhile, some players who rank pretty low in this metric are Cooper Flagg, Jase Richardson, Rasheer Fleming and Labaron Philon (so they’re likely worse shooters than some numbers might indicate).
As helpful as Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins is, even this stat isn’t accurate every time when projecting shooters at the NBA level. Let’s take a look. Again, numbers are from each player’s freshman season – sophomore season for Butler:
If we exclude Harper (who hasn’t been drafted yet so we don’t know yet how he’ll turn out as a shooter), there seems to be a pretty big gap between the guy who had an Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins of 1.0 or higher and the rest who were all under 0.4. The players who were at 1.0 or higher – they pretty much all went on to become good shooters in the NBA. The only one who didn’t was Markelle Fultz.
Fultz seems to be an outlier. He may have fallen short of expectations in the NBA just due to injuries. Perhaps in his case, the low FT% could have been a clue that he might not end up being a good shooter, though. But of course, FT% isn’t completely accurate for projecting shooters.
The other thing to make note of on this chart is that being below that 0.4 mark does not necessarily mean you won’t be a good shooter. Jalen Brunson, Jamal Murray and Tyrese Maxey are all very low in this metric, yet all have been good shooters in the NBA.
So with Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins, the guys who are really high in this (1.0 or higher) almost always become good shooters in the NBA, while the guys who are low in this metric (like under 0..4) sometimes become good NBA shooters but often do not.
Also worth noting that Dylan Harper does rank pretty high in this metric. Not quite at 1.0 but is still a bit higher than all of those guys who are under 0.4. This does bode well for Harper’s shooting projection.
With shooting projection, there’s no silver bullet, no easy button or shortcut. There’s no stat that you can look at and say, “he’s low in this stat so he can’t shoot” or “he’s high in this stat so he’s an elite shooter.”
Scouting – or at least good scouting – is more complex than that.
I think you have to factor everything in. 3 FG%, 3PA / 40 Mins. FT%. Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins. FG% at the rim helps – especially if you can filter out the dunks to see what kind of touch the player has on shots close to the basket. Those shots at the rim (especially for guards/wings) are often tough shots that the player has to make through contact and/or over much taller players so guys with a really high FG% at the rim often have good touch.
You can also factor in volume and efficiency of mid range jumpers. Shot versatility (hitting movement 3’s, off the dribble 3’s, shots coming off screens, pin downs, etc.). The more versatility, the better they project as a shooter.
And finally, you’ve gotta watch them on film. You can’t just look at the stat sheet. The main things you look for on film is the player’s touch and their mechanics. Watching the film is how I saw Markovic had concerning touch on his shots. And how I saw that Topic had a low and slow release.
I also recall an article by Adam Spinella a couple years ago where he talked about one thing he looks for in film is consistency of a player’s shot. He said he would feel more confident in a prospect’s shooting projection if they shot the same way every time. Like if their base was always the same. But if a player’s shot wasn’t consistent – like if sometimes they released the ball off to the side more, that would be a red flag.
Spinella was then hired by the Sixers to be a scout.
Work ethic also matters. It’s hard for us random fans to really know how much work ethic these draft prospects have, but there are some clues here and there if we pay attention. Like this clip, where Illinois coach Brad Underwood says that Kasparas Jakucionis was in the gym putting shots up at midnight after they lost to the no. 1 team in the country and didn’t leave until 2am. And that he put up 4,200 shots during finals week at school, yet still got a 4.0 GPA.
Sample Size Matters
Part of the reason why guys like Jaden Springer, Julian Phillips and Kwame Evans Jr haven’t ended up being great shooters despite the high FT% they all had as freshmen is because it was only their freshman year. That is only 1 season. 1 season is not a lot. That’s not a big sample size.
Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser were really good shooters for 4 college seasons. That’s a really big sample size. With them, we know they could shoot – we could tell with a much higher degree of confidence that they could really shoot it.
With one and done college players or international guys who are only 18 or 19 years old when they’re drafted, it’s helpful to expand the sample size whenever possible so we’re not just looking at one season’s worth of data. So if we can also pull their stats from their senior season in high school, that helps. If we can pull their stats from FIBA, that helps. Even exhibition games at the beginning of their freshmen season help.
Case in point, Dylan Harper. Some folks might look at his current FT% of 70.8 and think that is low so he won’t shoot well in the NBA. But if we expand the sample size we see this:
1st 19 reg season games at Rutgers: 75/106 FT
Exhibition vs St. John’s: 2/3 FT
Nike Hoop Summit: 5/5 FT
Mcdonald’s All-American game: 2/3 FT
Jordan Brand Classic: 2/4 FT
Don Bosco vs Archbishop Stepinac: 2/3 FT
City of Palms, vs LUHI, 10/13 FT, vs McEachern 2/2 FT, vs Columbus 10/10 FT, vs IMG 9/11
Bergen County Jamboree, 3 games: 19/21 FT
FIBA U18 2023, 7 games: 20/27 FT
Total, 39 games: 159/202 (78.7%)
6 games in January 2025 he played w/ flu/injury: 12/22 (54.5%)
Removing the 6 games in January 2025 he played w/ flu/injury so 33 games total: 147/180 (81.6%)
As you can see, when we expand the sample size and we go further back and include his high school games, we now have a more accurate evaluation since it’s a larger sample size of data. And we’re now seeing that Harper is actually a very good FT shooter which should give us more reason for optimism for him as a shooter in the NBA.
Age Matters
This is perhaps obvious but we shouldn’t be holding 18-19 year old draft prospects to the same standards when it comes to shooting that we do with 10 year NBA vets. By that I mean, the league average in the NBA for 3 FG% is around 36%. But that 36% includes guys like Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Buddy Hield and Sam Hauser.
The average age in the NBA is 26. That’s much older than 18-19 year old college kids. For an 18-19 year old freshman or overseas pro player, averaging 36 FG% is not 36%. It’s more like 28 or 29%. So if a freshman is shooting like 30-31% from 3, that’s actually pretty good.
But if we’re talking about a junior or senior who’s like 22 or 23 years old, 30% from 3 is not good. He is quite a bit older so he should be at least around 33 or 34%, if not higher.
Size Matters
I also want to point out that size matters. Smaller players typically develop their shooting earlier than bigger players. That’s why we often see bigs like Brook Lopez, Al Horford and Jusuf Nurkic who were not really shooters before they were in the NBA end up being shooters later on in their NBA careers, You do not typically see that kind of stuff (being a late bloomer shooter) with guards/wings.
When you’re looking at shooting numbers, the bar should be a bit lower for bigs. For guards/wings, a good 3PA / 40 Mins number is at least 4, but ideally it’s 5 – 6 or higher. But for bigs, anything 3.0 or higher is good. That’s partly why I’m higher on Asa Newell as a shooting prospect than I am with other bigs like Collin Murray-Boyles or Derik Queen.
On the flip side, shorter players typically develop their shooting at an earlier age – as we’ve seen with guys like Payton Pritchard, Jared McCain, Reed Sheppard, Rob Dillingham, etc.
The taller the player is, the more time/development they will likely need with their shooting. If we’re talking about 18-19 year old freshmen, a guy like Ace Bailey at 6’8″ shooting 38% from 3 is much more impressive than a 6’2″ player like Rob Dillingham shooting 38% from 3. Likewise, a shorter player who is struggling to shoot (such as Sharife Cooper) is a much bigger red flag than a 6’6″ or 6’9″ player struggling to shoot.
Other Skills/Attributes Matter
If a guy is an elite driver, chances are they won’t be an elite shooter too – at least not as a freshman. You look at the prospects in recent years who have been the most elite at driving the basketball and attacking the basket – Zion Williamson, Jaylen Brown, Jimmy Butler, De’Aaron Fox. None of them were good shooters as freshmen (or even as a sophomore in Butler’s case). But all 4 of those guys ended up being stars at the NBA level.
Dylan Harper has a higher Unassisted Field Goals Made at Rim / 40 Mins as a freshman (or sophomore in Butler’s case) than all of those guys, except for Williamson. And with a higher FT%, higher 3PA volume and much higher Unassisted 3PM / 40 Mins, Harper is a better shooting prospect than Williamson – and a better passer/facilitator.
Giannis is an elite driver but not a good 3 point shooter. LeBron throughout his career has been an elite driver but for the most part has not been a very good 3 point shooter.
John Wall, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, etc. You don’t have to be a good 3 point shooter to be a really good scorer / offensive engine in the NBA. But if you’re an elite driver, you do have a good chance at being a really good scorer in the NBA.
Also, keep in mind that shooting is the easiest, most common thing that we see players improve upon after they get to the NBA. Meanwhile, things like handle, bag, driving, rim pressure and rim finishing are things where we don’t see as much improvement by players after getting to the NBA.
Prospects who are elite drivers but not great shooters typically have a higher chance at becoming stars in the NBA (LeBron, De’Aaron Fox, Ja Morant, Jimmy Butler, Paolo Banchero, Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes, Giannis, Westbrook, etc.) whereas players who are good shooters but not good drivers as prospects, they typically just end up being role players in the NBA – guys like Sam Hauser, Duncan Robinson, Gradey Dick, Garrison Mathews, Jaden Hardy, etc.
To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at the chart which shows the best seasons in terms of driving the basketball by recent draft prospects – based on Unassisted Field Goals Made / 40 Minutes and Free Throw Rate (FTr)
As you can see, pretty much none of these guys were good 3-point shooters during the season listed here. It’s really just Ja Morant (who was a sophomore so further along in his development than a freshman, playing vs easier mid-major competition), Trae Young (who’s an outlier but is also a smaller player and earlier we touched on how smaller players often develop as shooters earlier) and SGA (who shot well from 3 in college but the volume was negligibly low.
Out of this group, some of them ended up becoming good shooters in the NBA, some did not (Zion, Simmons). Some have been just ok shooters like Ja and Fox. But pretty much all of them become stars in the NBA. Eason and Seabron were a bit on the older side too. So what we’re seeing is that regardless of shooting ability, freshmen who are elite drivers almost always become NBA stars.
It’s a similar story with elite defenders. Guys like Marcus Smart, Draymond Green, Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler, Rudy Gobert, Dyson Daniels and Alex Caruso have all been very good NBA players. Yet none of them were good shooters in college(especially not as freshmen) and they also have not been very good shooters in the NBA either. But their defense has been good enough to allow them to have long, productive NBA careers.
We should be careful to not overvalue shooting in draft evaluation.
Guys like KJ Martin, Hamidou Diallo, Killian Hayes and Usman Garuba have not been good enough in other areas to compensate for their shooting limitations. Peyton Watson on the other hand, has been good enough on defense to compensate for the shooting limitations – while being young enough and having enough size/athleticism for an NBA team to be patient with him and develop his other skills.
Here’s a rough ranking of skills/attributes, in order of easiest and most common for players to improve once they get to the NBA to hardest and least common for players to improve after being drafted:
-Shooting
-Strength
-Defense
-Basketball IQ, feel, processing, court awareness, positioning
-Handles, bag, shot creation, driving
-Athleticism
-Intangibles (work ethic, desire, competitiveness, character, effort, confidence)
The higher upside prospects with more star potential are typically the ones who are strong in the skills/attributes that are lower on that list. Prospects who are better at skills/attributes higher up on the list (but weaker in the skills/attributes lower on the list) are probably lower ceiling prospects who will just be role players.
Trajectory Matters
If we look at the prospect’s shooting numbers, we should look at the trajectory he’s on. What we’ll see is 4 primary buckets for their trajectory:
-Steady improvement – this is good
-Steady decline – this is bad
-The numbers for the most part stay the same, month after month, year after year. This is good and bad. It’s good because you know what to expect from this prospect from a shooting perspective. You know what they are, how well they shoot. On the downside, we can’t really project much improvement from him
-All over the place – this is not good. Makes it really hard to predict how well he will shoot
The more years a prospect has played college ball (or overseas pro ball), the easier it is to see what type of trajectory he’s in, since we have a larger sample size of data. If it’s a freshman, we can still look at the game logs and see what type of trajectory he’s on. But we should also try to use a site like Cerebro Sports to try and pull their high school stats as well to get a larger sample size of data and get a better sense of what type of trajectory he’s on as a shooter.
For overseas players, we can go further back and look at their stats at the junior levels, ANGT competitions, FIBA competitions, etc.
Conclusion
It all factors in. Everything plays a part. The stats. The film (touch, mechanics). Age, size. Position/role/archetype. Work ethic.
If you’re only looking at 3 FG%, you’re missing important pieces to the puzzle. If you’re only looking at FT%, you’re missing important pieces to the puzzle.
Anyone can talk about draft prospects. Anyone can make their own big board or mock draft.
But you’ve gotta really roll your sleeves up, do your homework, crunch the numbers, watch film. Take notes. And do some in depth analysis in order to get really good at scouting.
And even then you’ll be wrong sometimes.
It’s fun as hell, though 🙂
Lastly, while 3 point shooting is obviously important in today’s NBA (these past 2-3 years teams are shooting more 3’s than ever before in league history), we should be careful to not weigh shooting too heavily in draft evaluations. Partly because as a mentioned before, players don’t typically become really good shooters till age 25-26 or later Al Horford and Derrick White didn’t become good shooters till age 29).
That should tell us that an 18/19 year old kid is so far away from that age where players typically become really good shooters that we shouldn’t hold that against them too much if they aren’t a great shooter yet as an 18/19 year old. Players typically are not yet there in their development as shooters when they’re that young.
The other reason we need to be careful to not put too much emphasis on shooting in draft discourse is Bam Adebayo. Jimmy Butler. Draymond Green. Rudy Gobert. Amen Thompson, Ausar Thompson, Tari Eason, Dyson Daniels, Ja Morant. There’s some really good players in the NBA who are not very good shooters. Adebayo and Butler were the Heat’s two best players when they went to the NBA finals in 2020 and in 2023 yet neither was a good 3 point shooter.
Alex Caruso wasn’t a good shooter when he played a valuable role on the Lakers 2020 championship team. Gary Payton II wasn’t a good shooter when he helped the Warriors win the 2022 NBA title.
De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis haven’t been very good shooters for most of their careers, but they’ve both been all-stars.
You don’t have to be a good shooter. But if you’re not a good shooter, you do hav e to be really good in other areas of the game.
Alright, that’s it. Hope this was insightful and will help us all become better draft evaluators.
The bottom line is don’t just look for a shortcut or a formula that will project draft prospects. Be willing to put the work in to watch hours of film and do meaningful statistical analysis.
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