Basketball Shooting Percentage

How Shooting Percentage Is Calculated

Shooting percentage is the share of a player’s shot attempts that went in, expressed as a percentage. It’s the most common way to measure shooting efficiency in basketball, and the same formula applies whether you’re looking at field goals, three-pointers, or free throws.

The Formula

$$\text{Shooting \%} = \frac{\vA{\text{Shots Made}}}{\vB{\text{Shots Attempted}}} \times 100$$

Worked Example

A player makes 45 of 90 shots attempted:

1. Divide: $45 \div 90 = 0.5$
2. Multiply by 100: $0.5 \times 100 = 50\%$

One Formula, Every Shooting Stat

Field goal percentage, three-point percentage, and free-throw percentage are all the exact same calculation — just enter the makes and attempts for whichever shot type you’re tracking.

Key Factors to Consider

• A small sample size makes shooting percentage noisy. A single hot or cold game can swing a player’s shooting percentage dramatically — a stat calculated over a whole season is far more representative of a player’s true shooting ability than one calculated over just a few attempts.
• Field goal percentage treats a two-pointer and a three-pointer the same, even though they’re worth different amounts. A player who shoots 40% on threes contributes more total points per attempt than a player who shoots 40% on twos — effective field goal percentage (a related stat that weights three-pointers appropriately) is often used alongside plain shooting percentage for this reason.
• Shot difficulty and shot selection aren’t captured by the raw percentage. A player who takes mostly easy, close-range shots will naturally have a higher field goal percentage than one who takes more contested or long-range shots — a high percentage alone doesn’t necessarily mean better shooting mechanics.
• Free-throw percentage is measured differently in practice, since free throws are uncontested. Because there’s no defender, free-throw percentage tends to run much higher than field goal percentage for the same player, and is often treated as a cleaner measure of pure shooting touch.

Interpreting Your Results

Whether a shooting percentage is “good” depends heavily on both the shot type and the level of play — a percentage that would be elite in one context is ordinary in another:

These ranges are rough, commonly-cited benchmarks for NBA players over a full season, not hard cutoffs — youth, high school, and college shooters typically run meaningfully lower on all three, since defenders are often less skilled, but games and reps are also fewer, so single-game percentages swing much more than a full-season NBA number. The most useful comparison is almost always against the same player’s own history, not a league-wide average — a sudden drop from a player’s usual percentage is a more meaningful signal than comparing them to an NBA star.

Common Mistakes

• Confusing field goal percentage with effective field goal percentage (eFG%). Plain FG% counts a made three exactly the same as a made two, so it doesn’t reward the extra point a three-pointer is worth. eFG% corrects for this with the formula $\text{eFG\%} = \frac{\text{FG} + (0.5 \times \text{3P})}{\text{FGA}} \times 100$ A player who shoots a lower raw percentage but takes more threes can still be more points-efficient once eFG% accounts for it.
• Ignoring free throws when judging overall scoring efficiency. True shooting percentage (TS%) folds free throws in alongside field goals to give the fullest single-number picture of scoring efficiency: $\text{TS\%} = \frac{\text{Points}}{2 \times (\text{FGA} + 0.44 \times \text{FTA})} \times 100$ A player who draws a lot of fouls and shoots free throws well can have real scoring value that field goal percentage alone misses entirely.
• Comparing raw percentages across players with very different shot mixes. A player who takes mostly layups and dunks will out-shoot a player who takes mostly contested mid-range jumpers on raw percentage alone, even if the second player is the better overall shooter — shot difficulty and shot selection matter as much as the percentage itself.
• Treating a percentage from very few attempts as meaningful. Going 3-for-4 is mathematically 75%, but four attempts tell you almost nothing about a player’s real shooting ability — the fewer the attempts, the less any single percentage should be trusted.

Useful to Know

Basketball has three related but distinct efficiency stats that all start from the same makes/ attempts idea this calculator uses: shooting percentage (this calculator — makes ÷ attempts, per shot type), effective field goal percentage (adjusts for the extra value of a three-pointer), and true shooting percentage (folds in free throws too, for the fullest picture of scoring efficiency). None of the three is “wrong” — they answer slightly different questions, and serious basketball analysis usually looks at more than one together rather than picking a single number in isolation.