Note: This newsletter combines two previously-published articles, some of which also appeared in Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide.
I watched the local NCAA Division II shooting guard work out during the summer. She shot 14% from the three-point line last season, but did not shoot like a 14% three-point shooter.
I asked about her percentage during the previous season. She said she lacked confidence because her coach played mind games, substituted on missed shots, and created a negative environment.
I asked about her goals. She wanted to shoot 40% from the three-point line, which seemed optimistic. She does not shoot like a 14% three-point shooter, but she’s not Klay Thompson either. I thought 35% was a reasonable goal. She finished the season shooting 37.3%, placing in her conference’s top 10, while playing three times as many minutes.
I should promote her success as my success: She improved from 14% to 37% after working with me in the preseason. My coaching is life-changing! The reality was she improved her shot selection and confidence.
She had a new head coach who allowed her to play through mistakes and missed shots and empowered her to shoot open shots. She did not hesitate or question herself and shot with confidence. She also attempted better shots. Her new head coach emphasizesd shot selection and worked to create open catch-and-shoot shots.
In most instances, we credit the shooting coach (me!) or individual trainer, not the head coach, the system, increased playing time, or the player’s shot selection. Statistics are fairly indisputable, and a 20+% improvement from season to season is strong evidence of the shooting coach’s effect. However, improvement stems from many avenues. A coach’s behaviors can have a huge effect on a player’s confidence and shooting percentages.
I know she improved because of her head coach’s coaching and system, not any magical effect I had. It’s amazing what happens when a coach believes in a player.
We attribute improvement to practice or coaching because the purpose of practice and coaching, after all, is improvement. We assume the practice and coaching caused the improvement. However, correlation does not mean causation: Just because two things are related does not mean one caused the other. Shooting improvement is multifactorial.
I use this to introduce a more recent article about the Miami Heat and their apparent shooting development, which the media mentioned repeatedly throughout the playoffs. After the 2023 NBA Draft, Kevin Pelton, one of the best writers on ESPN, alluded to the Miami Heat and shooting development.
I am a Heat fan and believe Eric Spoelstra is the NBA’s best coach, but, to me, the Heat’s shooting development demonstrates that a statement repeated enough becomes a fact, regardless of veracity. In today’s social media and content world, followers and likes equal expertise, and facts (statistics) often are ignored in favor of narratives, especially narratives floated by media members as favors to agents, friends, coaches, and trainers. Nearly everything is flavored with some amount of self-promotion, marketing, or quid pro quo.
The Heat demonstrate the difficulty in differentiating scouting, development, and coaching. The best organizations excel at all three, and each complements the other. The Heat and the Spurs are probably the two organizations most recognized for this alignment and excellence from all three facets. How do we determine whether a player’s improvement is simply a better fit, better coaching, or better role and role acceptance versus actual improvement, development, and addition of skills to one’s bag? A team such as the Heat may simply identify players primed for a break out in a different, better environment, as seems to happen whenever the Tampa Bay Rays acquire a new player.
I argued about player evaluations with a full-time, well-known scout in my younger days. After I was right, based on college career statistics, about three prominent players compared to the three he had touted, he suggested he had not been wrong: One coach used the player incorrectly, and another player stopped working hard. His scouting was correct; the players and coaches did not do their jobs. I stopped listening to scouts. If you can never be wrong, how can you be right? The lines between scouting, development, and coaching are blurred, and evaluating only one aspect — shooting development within an NBA team — is difficult, as I explained above in my own experience.
The Heat utilize undrafted and G-League players as much as anyone, which the media equate with great player development. Why not scouting? Why not coaching? Again, consider the source, and who is friends with whom, and who is simply repeating an already accepted narrative.
We assume players must improve greatly to move from undrafted to rotation players or G-League to NBA starters, but we largely ignore the environment’s effect, including coaching, on player performance. Eric Spoelstra and staff give players opportunities and the confidence to play to their strengths and play through mistakes. The organization has a culture based around hard work and role acceptance, and the organization has a strong foundation, from ownership to Pat Riley to Spoelstra: No player’s complaint is getting Spoelstra fired.
The Heat identify players who fit their style, system, culture, and organization. They know who they are, and what they want, largely because of the alignment from Riley to Spoelstra. Players may excel in Miami simply because the organization identifies players who fit and give them opportunities. This is not to discount their player development. Clearly, something happens to certain players in Miami, whether scouting, playing time, coaching, system, player development, or a combination. Miami is the NBA’s model franchise (along with San Antonio).
The current players used to demonstrate the Heat’s player development are Duncan Robinson, Max Strus, Gabe Vincent, and Caleb Martin. Each is a tremendous story in his own right, examples of perseverance, work ethic, and overcoming obstacles that typically disqualify players from the NBA. Again, each is an example of scouting, the Heat identifying specific players to fit specific roles, and players working hard and accepting their roles. Miami is selective in its talent identification, willing to take less heralded players who fit their model rather than sign more heralded or higher ranked players who may not fit. Miami knows who it is and who it wants, and these four share those qualities.
However, the evidence for the Heat developing shooters is less convincing.
Duncan Robinson is the true home-grown talent, an undrafted player who started his college career at an NCAA D3 program and spent a year primarily with the Heat’s G-League team before ascending to near superstardom in the Bubble. Robinson’s three-point shooting statistics are hard to believe.
His percentages decreased year by year through all three seasons at the University of Michigan, shooting 45%, 42.4%, and 38.4% from the three-point line. Somehow, after ignoring his rookie season in which he played sparingly, primarily in the NBA G-League, his three-point field goal percentages have declined year by year with the Heat: 44.6%, 40.8%, 37.2%, and 32.8%.
I have never seen such consistent regression. Robinson truly is an anomaly, and not just as an NCAA D3 player in the NBA. However, he provides no evidence of the Heat’s effectiveness in developing shooters, and potentially demonstrates the opposite, although his overall game has improved, as evidenced by his cutting and finishing in the NBA Finals.
Max Strus is an almost home-grown talent as another undrafted player. Strus started his college career at an NCAA D2 program prior to transferring to DePaul for his final two seasons. He spent his rookie season with the Chicago Bulls’ G-League team, but tore his ACL early in the season, meaning his rookie season was spent primarily in rehab.
He has improved in his second season everywhere he has played. At Lewis, he shot 35.2% and 36.0% in his two seasons. At DePaul, he shot 33.3% and 36.3%. In the NBA, discounting the abbreviated rookie season in the G-League, he shot 33.8% in his first season in Miami, followed by 41%; his shooting dipped to 35% on three-pointers in his third season.
Many of my junior-college players showed similar ups and downs. They improved in their second season playing for me, then their percentages decreased in their first seasons after transferring before rebounding in their fourth seasons as they adapted to the new coach and new level. We should expect players to improve between their first and second seasons at almost any level due to adapting to the new demands, coach, teammates, system, and more.
Strus’ fourth NBA season will be interesting: Will his three-point shooting percentage rebound back to 41% or higher or was that season an anomaly, and he is closer to a 36% three-point shooter as his NCAA and NBA career averages suggest?
Gabe Vincent is another player used to demonstrate Miami’s player development as an undrafted player from the Big West Conference (UCSB) who spent time in the NBA G-League before breaking through. However, he started his NBA G-League career with Sacramento’s G-League franchise, not in the Heat organization. How much did he improve in Stockton versus Sioux Falls and Miami?
Vincent’s three-point shooting percentages in his four years of college declined until his senior season: 41.6%, 38.5%, 32.9%, and 37.7%, for a total of 37.6%. Next, he played most of two seasons for the Stockton Kings before moving to Sioux Falls, the Heat’s G-League franchise, for the final 11 games of his second professional season in 2019-20. He improved from 29.1% as a rookie to 42.1% through 24 games in his second season with Stockton, and 36.9% in the final 11 games with Sioux Falls, for a total of 40.3% in his second G-League season. He was named the NBA G-League’s Most Improved Player for the 2019-20 season.
He played limited minutes with Miami in 2019-20, shooting 22.2% on 27 3FGA. In his three full seasons with the Heat, he improved from 30.9% to 36.8% and then back to 33.4%.
His three-point shooting percentages are all over the place, but history suggests he likely is better than his 2022-23 percentages. However, his shooting percentages in Miami do not demonstrate shooting development, as he has shot worse than his percentages in college and the G-League (although obviously against better talent/defense). I imagine his shooting stabilizes around 36%, like his second season, and similar to his college percentages.
Caleb Martin certainly turned heads while playing for the Heat, but Miami was not his first NBA team. Martin played four years of college basketball, starting at NC State and finishing at Nevada. He shot 30.5% and 36.1% at NC State before sitting out for one season as a transfer. In his first season at Nevada, he shot 40.3%, before dropping to 33.8%.
In limited appearances as a rookie for Charlotte, he shot 54.1% (20/37), but dropped to 24.8% in his second season. In his first season in Miami, he bounced back to 41.3%, and then fell to 35.6%.
His shooting has yet to show consistency from year to year, although this may be the first time he has settled into a consistent role and playing time with a guaranteed contract. I would expect him to stabilize as a roughly league-average three-point shooter in the 36% region, although maybe the postseason performance and guaranteed contract will give him a boost closer to 38%.
Decrements in performance often are blamed on the coaching or players’ role, but like improvements, these declining percentages likely are multifactorial as well. Miami is known for its exacting physical practices and preparation; could this negatively effect shooting in players’ second seasons? Maybe their improved physical conditioning in their first seasons causes an unrealistic bump, and then they regress toward their mean. Players may have had their confidence stripped in previous situations whether due to injury, demotion, playing time, and more, and the regular minutes cause an initial boost in confidence and performance that normalizes after a year or two. These differences simply may be normal fluctuations caused by less consistent shooters (than players such as Stephen Curry or Thompson) and increased defensive attention. Players may have minor injuries affecting their shooting, but not preventing them from playing. There are many explanations.
These four certainly performed better in Miami and became legitimate NBA contributors and starters, which few would have predicted during their NCAA careers. Something positive happens in South Beach, and Jaime Jacquez fits a similar profile as a four-year, experienced player, despite being a 1st Round pick with greater notoriety and expectations due to his UCLA career. Jacquez saw a big jump in three-point field goal percentage in his sophomore season, then regression for his final two seasons: 31.3% to 39.4%, then 27.6% and 31.7%.
In each instance, Miami identified players who had had shooting success, although their percentages had declined, potentially contributing to their availability. They were older for the potential curve as four-year college players, more mature and closer to their peak than drafting and developing an 18 or 19-year old, but the age and maturity likely provides a more representative evaluation than betting on the upside of a younger player with far fewer repetitions and a much larger variance of outcomes.
Miami is known as a franchise that does things its own way. Their foundation — from ownership to Riley to Spoelstra — and their culture self-selects players who are more mature and maybe who have something to prove. Their culture, environment, and talent identification seem to be second to none, but their shooting development appears overstated based on the statistics. Players improve in Miami through some alchemy of scouting, player identification, coaching, and player development, but the statistics from their four most recent success stories do not support their outsized reputation for shooting development. Instead, the reputation for shooting development seems to be an oft-stated narrative that has become a fact more because it is said a lot than because it is verifiably true.
All stats from Basketball Reference.