maybe not that far out but probably a half step to a step in. just imagine a garnett range jumper. 73% of his fg attempts are 2pt jumpers and he hits them at a 42% clip. the odd thing i noticed is that yao is consistently a below average jump shooter for his career even though he is an excellent ft shooter.
Bottom line. We have both terrible shooters and terrible decision makers who have the ball too often. I've dubbed TMac, Yao, and Artest the Brick Three. They haven't proven me wrong yet.
Jump shot==midrange, the most dangerous weapon in NBA. dunks, layups, 3 pointers are not included. basically, we are a team of bad shooters.
t-mac is usually one of the best high volume mid-range shooters. he's a lot better than lebron or kobe for example. yao on the other hand is one of the most overrated mid-range shooters in the nba. people look at his ft numbers and his great overall shooting touch and say he's one of the best big men in terms of mid-range shooting. but reality is he's just not. he only makes this shot if his feet are set and he has a lot of room and time to shoot it. he can probably hit 80 out of 100 on a consistent basis in practice, though.
TMac is a high volume bricker. If he is such a great high volume shooter, then why is his shooting percentage so low? You can't say small sample size! For a center, Yao is a terrible finisher. He ranks near the bottom among centers in terms of FG%. Part of it is because he leads or is near the top of the league in getting his shot blocked. He is just too feeble and unco-ordinated to be a good finisher.
Yao is shooting 37.5% or 3/8 (most likely, given that we don't see him take jumpshots that often). Thats probably your reason right there, he's 1 shot away from 50% or 25%... not a good sample. I bet that is the case with a lot of these players as they seem to only count jumpshots inside the 3 point line, which you don't see Alston and Co take a lot of shots like that, its either a 3 pointer or a layup.
i'm not talking about this year. i'm talking about his career as a whole. t-mac's overall average fg % (as a rocket) has a lot of reasons: - his low 3p fg % - his problems with not getting calls and finishing around the basket - the fact that he, as the primary ballhandler, has to take a lot of bad shots under pressure he's still a great mid-range shooter when healthy and one of the best rhythmn shooters in the nba. plus, i was pretty surprised at how well he has done as a spot-up shooter this year. if you're talking about this season, you're right. if not, you're wrong. yao's usually one of the most efficient scorers in terms of ts %. also, he's not near the top in getting his shot blocked. he's certainly not the best finisher but there are big men who are getting blocked more than him inside.
How? He rarely takes what is technically considered a jump shot within the flow of an offense. If he's only taking 30 jumpshots a season tops, the numbers could be off because of the small sample size. And even more so because some of those shots might not be in the flow of an offense. Maybe a desperation shot at the buzzer.
To everyone trying to make this not seem like a big deal: When Shaquille O'Neal from Phoenix is shooting 46% on the 2pt Jump shots stat (based on 37% of his shots) and that is better than everyone on the Rockets team, that is not a good sign.
McGrady #59 62.8%, he is absolultely deadly when he attacks the basket or shall I say when he actually wants to attack the basket. It just kills me sometimes to see him take a bail the defender out pull up fade away line drive jumper (and for all the T-Mac excuse mongers, he would do that when he was healthy as well). Good things happen when he drives to the bucket.
You bring up a good point about Yao, both this year and his 1st year he has struggled to finish around the bucket. To me it seems he has very little if any explosion ie.(lift) in that he's trying to lay the ball up instead of dunking it with any type authority. If he can just stay healthy for the rest of the season we could possibly see him get his legs back after 50+ games under his belt. Personally if I were one of the coaches I would take Yao to a basket and him practice dunking the ball as hard as he can about 100+ times per practice. Anything within 5ft he should just flush with total hatred.
Putting Yao in a gym and asking him to stand by the goal uncontested and dunk the ball extremely hard 100 plus times would be pretty cool to watch, but probably the biggest waste of time in Yaos adult life.
Man, whenever I look at some of these stats i start to think about if Chuck Hayes had any offensive skill whatsoever, how much of a beast he would be. He does all of the little things really really well i guess because his production stats are as low as they come, but his overall plus minus is always way better than our other bench players who produce way more.
