Projecting NBA 3-point percentage from college is hard. Some reasons for this are obvious: the college line is shorter and it's easier to get shots off against inferior athletes and sagging zone defenses. Some reasons are a little less obvious: college players don't approach a sufficient sample size of 3-point attempts (750) to separate the signal from the noise. Because of this, projections on NBA 3-point shooting miss all the time. On the positive extreme, you have Kawhi Leonard, a 25% 3-point shooter on 164 attempts, become a 39% NBA shooter. On the other end, you have 41%-shooting Brandon Ingram become a 29% shooter in his rookie year. Obviously he still has time to turn it around, but he won't be the first to have disappointed.

The limitations in using college 3-point percentage have led some draft analysts to focus on free throw shooting. They would view Brandon Ingram's 68% from the line as a red flag. Unfortunately, this is not particularly indicative either. While free throw shooting has advantages of having a typically larger sample size and of identifying natural touch, it still isn't a great indicator of NBA shooting.

Andrew Johnson of Nylon Calculus developed two models that use college stats to project the 3P% in the third and fourth seasons of a player's career. Neither model explains enough variation to be relied upon completely. The first model uses FT%, 3Pt%, and 3PA and explains 30% of the variation. The second model uses only FT% and 3PM and explains 34% of the variation. As expected, volume of 3-point shooting has a positive and significant correlation with NBA 3P%. Slightly unexpected is that including accuracy as a variable does not improve the model. (The first model uses Percentage and Attempts as to not double count makes.) The model had an R^2 of 0.63 in 2014, which is pretty good. Here are the two models:

NBA 3 Point % = .175 + .128 * Free Throw Percentage + .00449 * 3PTA per 40 + .163 * Three Point Percentage

NBA 3 Point % = .22 + .01571 * 3pt Made per 40 + .1389 * Free Throw Pct

The advantage of the first model over the second is that the baseline is lower. If you shot 0% from the FT line and made 0 threes, the first model would project you as a 17.5% 3-point shooter and the second would project you as a 22% 3-point shooter. It's more likely you will have a career as a 0% 3-point shooter, but unfortunately, that's just a limitation of the model. Either way, the differences are typically minor and I will show both below as Proj3Pt1 and Proj3Pt2 respectively.



For non-freshmen, I included both the current year and their career numbers. Some of these players are not projected as NBA 3-point shooters, but I tried to exclude only pure interior players. Take any low-volume player with at least 0.22 grains of salt. Here are the results for NCAA perimeter prospects Draftexpress has in the first round of this year's draft:

Player Proj3Pt1 Proj3Pt2 FT% 3P% 3P 3PA Malik Monk 38.4% 38.8% 0.822 0.397 3.4 8.6 Luke Kennard 38.3% 38.1% 0.856 0.438 2.7 6.1 Luke Kennard (career) 37.8% 38.0% 0.867 0.382 2.5 6.6 Lauri Markkanen 37.6% 37.4% 0.835 0.423 2.4 5.7 Donovan Mitchell 37.3% 37.8% 0.806 0.354 2.9 8.2 Justin Jackson 37.1% 37.6% 0.748 0.37 3.3 8.9 Semi Ojeleye 37.1% 36.7% 0.785 0.424 2.4 5.8 Semi Ojeleye (career) 36.9% 36.7% 0.785 0.415 2.4 5.8 Tyler Lydon 36.4% 36.1% 0.836 0.392 1.6 4.1 Tyler Lydon (career) 36.2% 35.9% 0.809 0.398 1.7 4.2 Donovan Mitchell (career) 36.1% 36.6% 0.788 0.329 2.3 7.1 Jawun Evans (career) 36.1% 35.6% 0.818 0.407 1.4 3.4 Caleb Swanigan 36.1% 34.9% 0.781 0.447 1.3 3 Jayson Tatum 36.1% 36.5% 0.849 0.342 1.7 4.8 Jawun Evans 35.9% 35.6% 0.812 0.379 1.5 4.1 Lonzo Ball 35.6% 35.3% 0.673 0.412 2.5 6.1 Zach Collins 35.3% 33.3% 0.743 0.476 0.6 1.2 Markelle Fultz 35.1% 34.6% 0.649 0.413 2.3 5.7 Jonathan Isaac 35.0% 35.2% 0.78 0.348 1.5 4.2 Dennis Smith 35.0% 35.1% 0.715 0.359 2 5.5 T.J. Leaf 34.8% 33.0% 0.679 0.466 1 2.2 Justin Jackson (career) 34.8% 35.0% 0.713 0.339 2 5.8 Caleb Swanigan (career) 34.7% 34.4% 0.76 0.376 1.2 3.1 Ivan Rabb (career) 32.9% 31.6% 0.666 0.409 0.2 0.4 Ivan Rabb 32.9% 31.7% 0.663 0.4 0.3 0.8 Josh Jackson 32.4% 31.9% 0.566 0.378 1.3 3.3 De'Aaron Fox 32.1% 33.2% 0.739 0.246 0.6 2.6 OG Anunoby 31.8% 32.0% 0.563 0.311 1.4 4.5 OG Anunoby (career) 31.7% 31.1% 0.522 0.365 1.2 3.4

I bolded some of the prospects that might be on the Sixers' radar. The biggest differences between the models are Zach Collins on the positive (valuing accuracy over volume) and De'Aaron Fox on the negative (valuing volume over accuracy). 2% isn't a big difference in this kind of projection, though.

There aren't a ton of surprises here. People expect Josh Jackson and De'Aaron Fox to be bad and Malik Monk, Luke Kennard, and Lauri Markkanen to be good. Perhaps Tatum will surprise some people as he's really developing his 3-point shot. As of right now, his form changes at about 20-21 feet. But at the start of the year, his form changed starting at about 18 feet. He's working his shot out and his high FT% is a good indicator that he can succeed.

The other prospect who needs a few more comments is Lonzo Ball. Most people have an opinion on his form. The negative opinions range from believing he will have trouble shooting if he's forced right on the one end to people believing that a bad form means a bad shot. I tend to dismiss the latter view (if he's succeeded this far, we can at least say the ugliness of the shot doesn't correlate with the accuracy). The former view is a major concern. Some are also concerned about his free throw percentage (67%). On the one hand, there's some evidence this is an outlier as it's a career low. On the other hand, his 3-point percentage is a career high and could easily be argued as an outlier season for him. I hate confrontation, so I'll just run the numbers for his senior year. I don't have minutes played, so I'm also assuming he played the full 36 per game. If he played less, then just mentally adjust his projection slightly higher.

Player Proj3Pt1 Proj3Pt2 FT% 3P% 3P 3PA Lonzo Ball (high school) 36.8% 37.1% 0.8 0.36 2.5 7.1

I don't have high school stats for Fultz or Monk, so feel free to ignore Ball's high school stats. I know Monk had a reputation as an inconsistent shooter, so he's done a lot to improve his shooting reputation in one year at Kentucky. He was always considered to be a good shooting prospect, but now he's viewed by many as an elite shooting prospect. As always, numbers can only take us so far.

One last avenue to look at is shooting off the dribble. For this, I used Hoop-Math.com to filter out assisted 3-point FGs. These numbers are not the percentage numbers off the dribble, which I don't have available, but unassisted 3P%. By definition, I missed shot is unassisted, so it is impossible to differentiate misses off the catch and misses off the dribble. I assume it is more useful to know which players made more shots unassisted than the percentage, but I included both for reference.

Name ua3PM/t3PM UA 3P% Evans, Jawun 61.1% 27.2% Smith, Jr., Dennis 51.9% 22.4% Fultz, Markelle 44.2% 23.7% Ball, Lonzo 26.3% 15.6% Kennard, Luke 23.9% 15.7% Fox, De'Aaron 23.5% 7.1% Mitchell, Donovan 21.3% 10.4% Monk, Malik 18.3% 10.7% Isaac, Jonathan 16.1% 7.9% Ojeleye, Semi 13.7% 9.2% Jackson, Justin 13.3% 7.3% Tatum, Jayson 12.5% 6.1% Lydon, Tyler 8.2% 5.1% Markkanen, Lauri 5.8% 4.1% Swanigan, Caleb 5.3% 4.1% Leaf, TJ 3.7% 3.1% Collins, Zach 0.0% 0.0% Rabb, Ivan 0.0% 0.0% Anunoby, O.G. 0.0% 0.0%

Those percentages are the absolute minimum a player shot off the dribble.

One final note to wrap this up is on international prospects. The model was not trained on international prospects and there is no reason to think it should be applied. However, I'm nothing if not intellectually lazy, so I will post the results anyway.

Player Proj3Pt1 Proj3Pt2 FT% 3P% 3P 3PA Rodions Kurucs 36.2% 36.7% 0.796 0.316 2.3 7.4 Frank Ntilikina 34.5% 33.9% 0.65 0.407 1.8 4.4 Terrance Ferguson 32.9% 33.2% 0.6 0.313 1.8 5.9 Isaiah Hartenstein 32.5% 33.2% 0.697 0.28 0.9 3.4

Terrance Ferguson is an American, but he is included because he is playing overseas. He is probably the player in this draft with the prettiest shot that doesn't go in. To my eyes at least, his form looks good. When he hits, the net hardly moves. But he has played pretty poorly in Australia. Frank Ntilikina is disappointing as well, though he is younger than the other PG prospects in this draft (though only two months younger than Fultz).

With 3-point shooting, the stats are no substitute for scouting. Explaining 30-34% of the variation is useful, but we're clearly missing a lot. As with everything, this is just one data point in the bigger picture. You probably did not need this fanpost to know that Malik Monk is a better shooter than De'Aaron Fox, but hopefully this can at least mute some of the hottest of the hot takes.