The mid-range jumper: Important for shot creators, not so important for spot up shooters

Mid range is important. If a stretch 4 or any other spot up shooter does not have a mid range game, it becomes that much easier to guard and neutralize him no matter how good he may be. Case in point, Novak. And yeah I'd take Scola over Delfino, TJ or D-Mo even now, let alone prime Scola.

 

The number one line at the MIT Sloan conferences since the early days

 

hopin harden worked on his midrange

 

Having a decent mid range jumper is important for a lot of reasons that some people on this site tend to ignore. For example in end of the game situations. 35% from three might be statistically better than 44% from the midrange, but if you're down 1 point at the end of the game than clearly the midrange shot gives you a significantly higher % to win the game.

 

TL;DR

joke aside, if we have a player that is great at mid-range jumper but not as good in 3pt land, your theory doesn't hold. Say we have LMA or younger Rip Hamilton. If you have those kind players, you want to change up your games for them. For instance, Rip isn't a primary handler, his game relies on running off screens, and then spot up catch and shoot. But those mid range jumpers are too good to pass up.

Another example is Patterson was a great mid-range shooter, despite his softness he was great for our offense success last season. Point is very few bigs have the range to shoot 3. A long 2 is good enough, also gives them the room to fake the shot and drive in. This applies to LMA as well, you want him to shoot the long 2s, which he's good at, not 3s.

 

The basic fallacy this argument always fall into is that a player can only have good midrange or good 3pt, but not both. As a result the argument lost its original meaning making people think midrange is a useless feat.

The original meaning of the argument is if a player had to master 1 feature, it is always better to master 3pt shooting instead of midrange because statistically 3 pt shooting is the better option.

Mid-range jumper is ALWAYS an important skillset for any player to have because it is an offensive option. It's as simple as that. To put it simply, if you had to play RPS (Rock Paper Scissors), would you be in a better position if you can use all 3 items or be stuck with 2? It a game of positioning, would you rather have 10 offensive plays vs 10 defensive sets or 7 offensive plays vs 10 defensive sets? A team would always be better off if the have midrange options.

What the midrange argument is arguing instead is would you rather have 7 offensive plays of midrange goals or 7 offensive plays of 3pt goals if you only get to choose 1? Which is a completely different argument than whether midrange is important or not.

 

Howard, Asik & the other Rockets big men should also develop a midrange game; to draw shot blockers and rebounders away from the basket from time to time, but still earn their bread & butter around the rim.

 

Except he's NOT good at them! LMA averaged .86 PPS on midrange shots last year. That is GARBAGE! I understand the argument that certain players need to have a competent midrange game for when there are broken plays or end of clock situations. That makes sense. However that needs to be your last resort option. If taking shots that you score .86 PPS on is a staple of your offense, it's a shot you're looking for, then you are hurting your team.

I read an article recently that compared the shot selection of Carmello Anthony to LeBron James. Anthony was far and away better at creating and converting open or contested 2's. So why is LeBron so significantly more efficient than Melo every year when Melo appears to be the better "pure scorer". Because Lebron takes so few of them in comparison. He would rather get to the rack, or set up a teammate on a pass, than settle for the crappiest shot in basketball.

Looking for mentioned article...

 

Said article: http://wagesofwins.com/2012/02/22/scoring-at-will-lebron-vs-melo/

Bonus article that expounds on the virtues of midrange: http://courtsideanalyst.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/washington-wizards-stumbling-on-stupidity/

 

It seems like what you want to say is:


1. It is much better for role players to have a three point game than having a mid-range game.

2. It is worthless to have a role player that can't do anything except for shooting mid-range while that's not the case for 3 point ability.

3. If a player is deadly from mid-range then he's not a role player.


That's quite true, even though very limiting.



On a side note, in the Finals, the Spurs used the strategy of clogging the lane, closing out on three point shooters and making them shoot mid-range, they were one FT away from the championship. It's a good idea to be able to shoot the mid-range.

 

You have that backwards; it's a good idea to force your opponent to shoot from midrange.

 

It's better for a team to have players good at the 3, going to the rack, and even midrange.

It's necessary for our primary offensive guys to be as versatile as they can be.

The midrange comes into play when defenses takes away our primary go-to plays like at-the-rim shots and 3s. When defenses are taking away our inside game, we aren't generating fastbreaks, and our 3pt shots aren't falling, then we need to take and hit those midrange shots.

Reason why this summer Harden is working on his midrange shot.

 

Let's say Harden does Improve his midrange game. Let's say he shoots as well from midrange as Lebron James, 42.5% from 10-23 ft. That way, when teams take away our 3pt shot and driving lanes we can still score!

...except shooting 42.5% is equal to a shooting 28% from 3....

Is that seriously what we want our fallback plan to be?

If they try to take away your best options you don't settle for the crappy shots they want you to take; you use more creative offensive sets to get your shots anyways. Hell I'd almost rather Harden just jack contested 3's over taking more midrange shots, betting that he hits them at better than 28%.

Note: I do want Harden to shoot better on midrange shots than he did last year. I just don't want him to take more of them.

 

What spawned this thread? It sounds like the OP got caught up in an argument and backed himself into a corner. Versatility is an advantage for ANY player.

 

You make a good point in that in end of game situations, when down by one, two, or tied, that the 44% midrange shot is a lot better than a 35% 3-ball. However, that is the only instance when a midrange shot would be preferred to a lower percentage 3-pt shot and it has to be taken as the game clock is expiring so that the opponent does not have an opportunity to counter.

And I could make quite the argument that taking a 3-point shot with time left on the game clock makes more sense because it either goes down or your offensive rebounders have a chance at the rim, and that combined opportunity is better than waiting for the game clock to expire and just getting off the measly 44% 17 footer. But....if you are running a play from out-of-bounds with only a second or two on the clock and you are tied or down one...then you have a point.

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Now, on to Meh's original post. I think he's right....with one additional caveat. Meh is saying that if you are a primary ball handler that you should be able to take the midrange shot and it be more accurate because you are taking it off the dribble than other non-ball handling players taking the midrange shot as a spot up shot. I'd like to add one more constraint....WHILE GOING TO THE BASKET.

In other words, with your momentum going towards the basket and off the dribble. That eliminates all the dipsy-doo shots off the behind-the-back, through the legs, and cross-over dribbles that change the ball-handler's momentum from straight at the basket to going sideways and that turn into mostly fadeaway jumpers. Those are lower percentage shots. But...if you are running pick and roll and the small defender has slipped the pick and is laying in the lap of the roller as the guard is pushing the ball towards the free throw line, I think that's a good shot.

I'm describing one of Jeremy Lin's bread-and-butter plays here. And I think both he and Harden are excellent at it. And you guys know how much I despise midrange jump shots. However, if I were coaching this team, I'd be ok with either Harden or Lin taking the 15-footer off the pick-and-roll when the defending guard goes with the big and leaves them open as they dribble towards the bucket.

I don't think there's any shot charts available that specify that type of shot. But I'd like to see it tracked. I think we would find out that on those type of plays that our guards are probably around 60% on that shot. And that would be acceptable.

 

OP posted a Wages of Wins projection that heavily favored the Rockets. Several posters said they don't trust Wages of Wins because of how it ranks certain players, like LMA and other scorers. So that started an argument about offensive efficiency and whether a high volume, average efficiency scorer is as valuable as they are traditionally thought to be.

As to the original projection, yeah it's a bit far fetched. They say on the website that they're going to be wrong. Projections like this are still a ways from being super accurate because its so hard to project how players will interact, coaching issues, health etc. OTOH, Wins Produced, which is the stat the projection is based off of, is very good at explaining why teams succeeded/failed with a 95% correlation between individual players WP numbers and actual wins in a given season.