How science built the best shooter in the NBA draft

livemint.com:

Reed Sheppard arrived at the University of Kentucky last season as a decent shooter. Both his parents had played basketball for the Wildcats, meaning he’d been schooled in the nuances of swishing a basketball through an 18-inch hoop since his first attempts on a kiddie rim. But when Sheppard hears his name called early in the NBA draft on Wednesday night, it won’t be because he’s a decent shooter.

It will be because, during his lone season in college, he transformed into something entirely different. He became the best long-range shooter in the country. The story of Sheppard’s one-year overhaul doubles as the story of how data is reshaping the very foundations of sports.

At Kentucky, he became obsessed with a screen affixed to the wall at the practice facility, whose readouts told him how close he’d gotten to the perfect shot. Sheppard would hoist a 3-pointer, watch the net ripple, and look immediately at the “Splash Board," which told him how close to the platonic ideal of arc and aim he’d just gotten. “He was looking at the Splash Board on every shot, every day," said John Carter, CEO of Noah Basketball, the shot-tracking company that manufactures the product.

“He was just so dialed into it." Noah’s technology, which is used by nearly every NBA team, focuses on distinctions much finer than simple makes and misses. Using cameras installed above a court, it tracks a shot’s angle, depth, and left-right aim, and supplies instant readouts on its massive screen. Shots that land in the ideal range of all three metrics—approaching the basket at 45 degrees, just grazing the back rim on its way down—register as “splashes." As soon as he got to Lexington last summer, Sheppard started a new routine centered around that board.