A very interesting result: computing payoffs of players, the following is a diagram that shows when it is optimal for a player to shoot a 2 point or a 3-point shot. One sees that it is hardly ever optimal for a player to shoot a 3-point shot, since the region corresponding to 3-point optimality is quite narrow. This can be interpreted as saying that for a 3-point attempt to be optimal, a player’s 2PT% must be roughly equal to his/her 3PT%, which is certainly not the case for the vast majority of even designated 3-point shooters in the NBA!
Relativity Digest 