While this question relates to basketball, it is more so a question of statistics and probability. I wondered if one could determine a basketball players career high shooting percentage from high school stats. A few things that I cannot account for are Shot IQ, open vs. contested shots and practice percentage (vs in-game). Players like Stephen Curry & Russell Westbrook take 300 makes a day (work record for most 3's in a row takes 500)...yet their 3pt% has barely risen since high school. I'll use FT% or 3pt% as possible to explain:
Russel Westbrook (HS-Junior 2004/05) FT: 70% on 77 attempts
Russel Westbrook (College Senior 2007/08) FT: 71.3% on 150 attempts
Russel Westbrook (NBA-BEST FT YEAR 2016/17) FT: 84.5% on 428 attempts
In 3 years he worked up to 1.5% better. In 12 years we got to near 15% better. Lebron James follows a similar trend in 3pt shooting (this year excluded) and not much better it FT going from freshman year of HS at 79% to NBA season 08/09 at 78% (worse). All NBA players I can get high school stats on have a similar trend, either staying the same or only increasing their numbers by 5-10% (Westbrook the exception).
We know that height to weight ratio can cause variability (by running the numbers and cross reference to FT%). We know that some kids have a head start advantage (Curry with a sharpshooting dad). But it seems that the most a freshman high school (prodigy) can hope to increase their shooting percentage is 5-15% over their prime (15 years of practice). So what I want to know...and this may sound ludicrous, does anyone have PROOF that shooting practice actually improves shooting SIGNIFICANTLY. I know that it helps as with any skill, but it seems that the current 'practice' methods are minimally effective at making shooters better.
This is not a debate, I want academic research, team data or even personal case studies to prove or disprove that volume shooting practice is effective so that coaches can make data driven decisions.