FT% to 3P% correlation

[SilentA]

Feel free to delete this if it was ever done, but has anyone ever done an actual comprehensive analysis on this correlation? Having actual comprehensive data on this I think would be useful for assessing past players ability to translate to an extent. I know there will be no perfect FT% to 3P% conversion (shot selection, shot mechanics, player personality, whatever).

- What is the average correlation between 3P% and FT% in "modern era" (assuming certain amount of attempts)? Let's say 2020 onwards.
- For outliers/exceptions, who are they and why? E.g. I assume poor shot selection primary options would have a lower 3P% than the average correlation, role players who spam corner 3s but aren't actually good shooters would get inflated 3P% relative to their mediocre FT%, etc.
- Can we apply this to past players and make more educated (even if still imperfect) assumptions on how they'd adapt?

Just kind of tired of people going back to "he had a high FT% he'd definitely be fine today" vs "his 3p% was bad and you have no way of knowing how he'd do today look at [a couple of exceptions]" simple binary arguments, so I'm wondering if there was an actual more informed analysis ever done on this idea.

[SilentA]

Nvm I got bored, copy pasted a whole bunch of numbers from 2024-2025 season of everyone who shot 4.0 or above 3PA per game and just put it through AI with a bit of guidance on what I'm looking for:

Pearson Correlation (r): 0.592
R-squared (R²): 0.350 (35% of FT% variance explained by 3P%)
P-value: < 0.0001 (highly statistically significant)
Sample size (n): 125 players
Interpretation: There's a moderate-strong positive correlation between 3P% and FT%, which is highly statistically significant.
Classification Results:
Total Players: 125
Within Correlation (Standardized Residuals between -2.0 and +2.0):
Count: 113 players
Percentage: 113/125 = 90.4%
Outliers (Standardized Residuals beyond ±2.0):
Count: 12 players
Percentage: 12/125 = 9.6%

Basically the outliers are 3&D players having disproportionately high 3P% like DFS and Royce O'Neal (except Jokic somehow, weird one but maybe it's shot selection or something) and mostly primary shot creators like Steph Curry/Dame having disproportionately high FT% (for Steph, 39.7% for 3 is high in general, but still low compared to his ridiculous 93.3% on FTs). I'm sure there are more exceptions like DeRozan if I lower the 3PA threshold to 3.0+ or something but around 90% of players falling within this correlation in the modern era makes sense to me. I can now use this for fun to casually estimate "X player in modern era" memes.

I am fully aware that this is an extremely lazy methodology, I just did it because nobody else did that I can find and nobody replied yet. I would be very interested if someone good at statistical analysis did something much better.

[Caneman786]

Malik Beasley also has a surprisingly low free throw percentage.