In a season that saw teams play more games than ever before, EuroLeague players put their remarkable shooting skills on display and delivered historic shooting accuracy.
Closer look: Shooting accuracy soared in 2020-21
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In a season that saw teams play more games than ever before, Turkish Airlines EuroLeague players put their remarkable shooting skills on display and delivered historic shooting accuracy. Especially from long range.
With each team playing 34 regular-season games, and three teams – Anadolu Efes Istanbul, FC Barcelona and AX Armani Exchange Milan – playing a record 41 games during the 2020-21 campaign, it should not surprise anyone that 13 teams set single-season club records for three-point shots made.
It all led to teams knocking down a total of 5,912 three-point shots, smashing the previous single-season high of 4,758. The teams also combined to make the most-ever 12,771 two-point shots.
Despite the high volume of long-range shots, not only did league-wide shooting percentages not drop, they reached new heights! As the graphic above shows, the 2020-21 season saw the highest three-point shooting percentage in league history. EuroLeague players made shots at an incredible rate of 37.82%, topping the previous best of 37.54% set in the 2017-18 campaign.
The players also shined from inside the arc, making 53.57% of their two-point shots, which was the second-highest percentage league-wide this century. The only season EuroLeague players shot better was in 2018-19 when they made 53.71% of two-pointers attempted.
Notwithstanding the record totals and high accuracy in both categories, a deeper look shows that the numbers of attempted two-point shots and three-pointers are heading in opposite directions.
The 2020-21 season had the second-most three-pointers attempted per game at 23.82 and the second-fewest two-point attempts at 36.3 per game. Another side effect of players shooting from deep more than ever before was the 2020-21 season featuring the fewest free throw attempts per game (16.87).
As one can see above, three-pointers are at an all-time high, with more than 34% of the points scored in the league coming from behind the arc in each of the last two seasons after having never broken 32% before. On the other hand, two-point shots are at an all-time low.
In each of the past two seasons, two-pointers accounted for fewer than 50% of all points scored, which had never happened before, while free throws accounted for less than 17% of all points for only the second time this century.
With the games at a faster pace, three-point accuracy at historic levels and players working non-stop at crafting their shooting skills, it will be intriguing to see if the long-range percentages can keep rising and whether the number of trips to the foul line will continue to dip.