I'm not saying to always settle for mid-range shots. I'm saying sometimes a mid-range shot is a better shot than jacking up a contested 3. And if a player can become good at shooting the mid-range shot, then it is an efficient shot. I'm not talking about a long 2. I'm talking about mid-range. Plus, it makes other scoring a little easier. Take Harden for example. If he never took mid-range shots, then it would be much easier for a defender to stop him. They'd know he's taking it all the way to the rim and will not pull up and shoot. Because he takes mid-range shots, it allows his percentages in other areas to increase because it's easier to score when the opponent doesn't know what you're gonna do.
You can about 90% of the time. His 3-point percentage would have to dip below 27% for it to be as inefficient as his 40% long-2 shot. Not likely to happen. In our offense...you pass out in those situations. If the 3 isn't there, you pass or go to the hole. You don't even spot up inside the 3-point line for that very reason. There's only a handful of players that shoot the midrange shot at 50%. Remember that is the equivalent to 33.3% on the 3-ball. Everybody else is WORSE THAN THAT! Murphy or no Murphy it's not an efficient shot.
Amazing. Golden State sure makes mid range jumpers and 3 pointers work regardless of what the overall stats say
Before he started taking threes in bulk this year, Ibaka shot plenty of jumpers from midrange. I know our team philosophy is to minimize shots taken from that area, but I don't think the amount of shots he took there or the percentages he hit them at really hurt OKC's chances too badly. His jumper may not have helped very much, but I don't think it hurt. Maybe it would've been better if he refused to shoot anything outside the lane like Brandan Wright or Tyson Chandler and shoot some sky high percentages, but I think he spaced the floor a little bit for Westbrook's drives.
I was just going to say....all you gotta do is look at 10-16 foot shots and you can see there's only a handful of players that shoot over 50% on those shots. Logic dictates that if only a handful of guys shoot 50% or more from 10-16 feet that the # of players shooting 50% or more on the 15 to 18 footers are about the same if not less.
Al Horford & Dirk Nowitzki lead the list: Midrange shots - 15-19ft - sorted by FG%, minimum 3 attempts per game Guess who is at the top of this list... Midrange shots - 15-19ft - sorted by FG%, minimum 2 attempts per game
