But one area that shines is the mid-range.ĭuring the offseason in 2019, while he was rehabbing from his torn Achilles, Durant took to Twitter to join the discourse about mid-range jumpers. You can look at a shot chart from Kevin Durant for half a second and see that he is absolutely brilliant from everywhere on the floor. Don’t be surprised if his teammates start making more mid-range looks as well. But his playmaking has improved, too, as no one has assisted on more long mid-range jumpers since 2018-19, per PBP Stats. That means that DeRozan may get a ton of open looks from the mid-range, and if we know him, he’s going to take them. Defenders won’t be able to ignore second-year forward Patrick Williams, who fared well when he was handed the keys to Chicago’s offense during summer league. But next season, DeRozan will head back to the East and will join the starting frontcourt for the Chicago Bulls.Ĭonsidering the prowess that both Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic have in the pick and roll, defenders are going to have to lock in on their two-man game. His sudden willingness to take catch-and-shoot 3s is more a reflection of him embracing a new role.”Īfter spending the first chunk of his career on the Toronto Raptors, DeRozan was the centerpiece of a deal that sent him to the Western Conference to play for the San Antonio Spurs. He came into the NBA as a slasher who depended primarily on his athleticism but has long since become a polished scorer with the touch and footwork to drain mid-range jumpers. “There was never any mechanical reason that DeRozan couldn’t take 3s before. 7gtvVnVxJRīut as noted by Jonathan Tjarks, the evolution to eventually step beyond the arc more often - even if he wasn’t hitting them - was inevitable for DeRozan so he could serve as a better floor spacer ( via The Ringer): It's crazy DeMar DeRozan just keeps getting better in the midrange.
Considering just how pretty it looks, it’s hard to blame him for wanting to take it as often as he does. Statistically, he has been far more reliant on these looks than any other player in the NBA.īut it’s also been successful as his mid-range jumper has been between ten to thirty percentage points better than his shots from long distance in each of the past five seasons, per Cleaning the Glass. It’s been the driving force to what has allowed him to average at least 20.0 points per game for seven seasons in a row. The Los Angeles Lakers were the only televised team, he recently explained, which meant that he watched a lot of Kobe Bryant.īryant was a mid-range maestro in his own right so that’s exactly what DeRozan has become during his time in the league. Growing up in Los Angeles, DeRozan didn’t have access to cable television. Even if everyone else in the league decided that they would only shoot at the rim or from beyond the arc, DeRozan would keep the in-between game alive. You already knew that a list about modern mid-range shooters is going to start with DeMar DeRozan. LaMarcus Aldridge, Tony Parker and Shaun Livingston) would have likely made this list if they were active and had not yet retired.īut in their absence, the following players are working the hardest to keep the “in-between” alive in the NBA.Īll data is extracted since 2018-19 and pulled from PBP Stats unless noted otherwise. It is worth mentioning that longtime NBA fixtures who recently stepped away from the game (e.g. Efficiency: This is simply the field goal percentage a player had on their short mid-range and long mid-range attempts.Shot dependency: We examined how often a player’s shots came from everywhere on the floor except at the rim and beyond the arc.Output: To determine just how prolific someone was from mid-range, we pulled total field goals made outside four feet but from inside the three-point line per 100 possessions.To determine which players are fighting the hardest to keep the mid-range game alive in the NBA, we looked at three factors and then compared how each individual performed relative to the league average in the same span (dating back to 2018-19): But at the same time, the mid-range game is not going to go away any time soon thanks to the style of play from several stars around the league. While those arguments are tired at this point, the data suggests that the league is increasingly moving away from the mid-range game. As the analytics community grows, one of the most common debates in basketball is the role of the mid-range jump shot in the modern NBA.
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