I know they're not on much, but I suggest watching them when you get a chance.
That game vs. OKC was legit and one of the better played regular season games I've seen in years. In fact, it just revealed to me that we're just moving furniture on the Titanic right now if competing with those two teams down the line is the ultimate goal.
I gotta dig deeper into Cleveland, as Kenny Atkinson appears to be a wizard of some sort. The Cavs have gone from #15 in 3pt % a season ago to a decisive #1 this year.
Player Name/Career 3pt%/This Season 3pt%:
Mitchell/36.9%/41%
Garland/39%/43%
Mobley/31%/41.6%
LeVert/34.7%/43.8%
Wade/37%/36.6%
Niang/39.6%/38.3%
Okoro/35.5%/43.5%
Merrill/38.3%/34.2%
Jerome/36.3%/41.2%
Every player except Wade, Niang, and Merrill has materially improved their 3-point shooting accuracy and a number of them are having career years. This can't be just be by chance, right? What has Atkinson done with their offense or team psychology to go from a middle of the pack shooting team last year to multiple guys having career years?
Those three point changes are crazy, one or two players having a jump sure but most of them is nuts. They've also been healthy this season. Last year games played Mitchell 55, Garland 57, Mobley, 50, and Allen missed most of the playoffs.
Caris LeVert is the one that gets me since he has the longest track record of being a middling shooter....until this season. I just wonder if Atkinson's offense is such a well oiled machine that guys are getting an extra beat on their 3-point shots to line 'em up.
Monster wrote: ↑Wed Jan 15, 2025 2:28 pm
Maybe someone has pointed this out but a few days ago I was curious about Randle's 3 point shooting. I was thinking he might be taking a higher percentage of 3's from the corners and that was leading to higher 3 point percentages. Well I was partly right. He is currently on pace to taking his 2nd highest percentage of 3's in the corners just over 20% which is over 5% more than the previous couple seasons which is a fairly sizeable jump. The thing is he is shooting terribly on those threes at 21% which is easily the worst he shot on 3's since his first full season in the NBA where he didn't make one. So on non-corner 3's overall he must be shooting those really well. I'd assume at some point he would start making more corner 3's and other spots will drop off. He is shooting poorly from 3 so far this month but he is a streaky guy so we will see if he picks up that aspect of his shooting again.
He's just been left wide open a lot on top. He should be shooting better even.
