Points Per Shot: The Number That Explains Modern Shot Selection

Ask me for the single number that explains why modern offenses look the way they do — why teams launch threes by the bucketful and treat the elbow jumper like spoiled milk — and I won't reach for True Shooting or net rating. I'll reach for the humblest stat on the list: points per shot. It is almost embarrassingly simple, and it quietly rewrote the geography of the sport.

What points per shot actually is

Points per shot is exactly what it sounds like: how many points, on average, a given shot is worth. You take the point value of the shot and multiply it by the rate at which it goes in. That's the whole thing.

Points per shotPPS = point value × FG%

A two-pointer is worth two points when it drops, so a 50% two yields 2 × 0.50 = 1.00 points per shot. A three is worth three, so a 36% three yields 3 × 0.36 = 1.08. Hold those two numbers next to each other for a second, because that tiny gap — 1.08 against 1.00 — is the seed of an entire strategic revolution. A barely-better-than-one-in-three three-pointer beats a coin-flip two. Not by a hair you need a microscope to see, either: over a season's worth of attempts, eight hundredths of a point per shot compounds into a real lead.

I like points per shot precisely because it strips the question down to the bone. It doesn't care how the shot looked, who took it, or how it felt. It asks one thing: per attempt, what does this shot pay? That's the question a good offense is built to answer, possession after possession.

The hierarchy it exposes

Run the math across the zones of the floor and a ruthless pecking order falls out. It's the same hierarchy I lean on in reading a shot diet, but points per shot is the engine underneath it.

Start at the rim. Shots at the basket convert at the highest rate on the floor — a layup or dunk is, by a wide margin, the most likely shot to go in. Even though it's only worth two, that sky-high make rate pushes its points per shot up near, and often past, 1.2. The rim is efficient not because the reward is big but because the success rate is.

Now the three. Each make pays an extra point, and that bonus does the heavy lifting. A league-average three doesn't need a glamorous percentage to clear the bar — as we just saw, the mid-30s in make rate already beats an average two. The corner three, closer to the rim than the rest of the arc, sits at the very top of this tier.

Then, sagging in the middle of the table, the long two. The mid-range jumper is the cruelest deal in basketball by this measure: it's worth only two points and it's hard, taken from far enough out that the make rate slumps into the low 40s or worse. Two points at 42% is 0.84 points per shot. That's the number that damns it. It's miles below the rim, comfortably below an average three, and there's no extra point waiting to rescue it. You're taking a hard shot for a small reward. Points per shot doesn't editorialize; it just shows you the 0.84 and lets you draw the obvious conclusion.

Try it yourself

I'd rather you feel this than take my word for it, so here's the tool I built for exactly this. Set how a team spreads its attempts across four zones — rim, mid-range, corner three, above-the-break three — and how well it shoots each, and the explorer computes points per shot by zone and total expected points per 100 shots. Drag the mid-range make rate down to a realistic 42% and watch its points-per-shot fall under an average corner three. That gap, sitting right there in front of you, is the whole argument.

Why this reshaped offenses

Here's where the simple number turns into a strategy. If the rim and the three pay more per attempt than the mid-range, then the optimization writes itself: take more rim shots and more threes, take fewer long twos, and your expected points per 100 shots climbs without anyone getting better at basketball. You're not asking your players to shoot a higher percentage. You're asking them to shoot the same percentages from more valuable spots. That's a free lunch, and front offices noticed.

So the floor got redrawn. Spacing fanned shooters out to the arc to make threes available and to bend the defense, which in turn opened lanes to the rim. The pace-and-space revolution wasn't an aesthetic choice or a fad — it was teams chasing points per shot to its logical endpoint. The drive-and-kick, the pick-and-roll that ends at the cup or kicks to a corner shooter, the relentless hunting of layups and threes: all of it is a machine for raising the average value of each attempt.

The mid-range didn't vanish because it's worthless — I'm careful about that, and I've written a whole piece on when the mid-range is still the right shot. Late in the clock, against a switch that's taken away everything better, a good mid-range shooter is making the correct read. Points per shot is an average, not a commandment for every single possession. But as a guide for how to allocate a whole season of attempts, it's brutally clear, and the league reorganized itself around it.

The honest caveats

A number this clean invites overreach, so let me hedge it properly. Points per shot, as I've used it here, only counts shots that end in a field-goal attempt. It says nothing about shots that draw fouls — a drive that gets you to the line is "worth" zero by this metric even though it might net you 1.5 points from the stripe, which is part of why rim pressure is more valuable than the raw field-goal math suggests. That's the gap True Shooting percentage exists to close, by folding free throws into the denominator.

It also ignores turnovers, offensive rebounds, and shot difficulty. A wide-open three and a heavily contested one carry the same point value but very different real make rates, which is the entire subject of shot quality. And points per shot per attempt is not the same as points per possession — you have to actually get the shot off, and not every trip down the floor ends in a clean look. That's the thread I pick up in the companion piece on what a possession is worth.

None of that demotes the stat. It just locates it. Points per shot is the cleanest possible answer to one specific question — which shots pay the most — and the answer it gives is the foundation everything else is built on.

The takeaway

Multiply a shot's point value by how often it goes in, and you get the number that explains the modern NBA. The rim and the three pay; the long two doesn't. Teams saw the 0.84 next to the 1.08, did the arithmetic, and rebuilt their offenses around the difference. The next time you watch a team pass up an open elbow jumper to swing the ball to a corner shooter, you're not watching a trend. You're watching a calculation — the simplest one in the sport, taken seriously.