doct3r dr3 wrote:tiderulz wrote:i dont believe that Drew has developed any reputation as a 3 pt shooter and defense do not respect him. he was been a low 30% 3pt shooter all year. maybe he can get better, maybe he can learn from Frye. still needs to be consistent in other areas of the court to get more playing time.
In the absence of the SportVU data on contested jumpers, the best I can do is point you to the
video of Nicholson's 3-point attempts (via NBA.com).
I'd say the Clippers were respecting his shot a bit in game 5 (11/6/13), but the league at large started respecting his shot in earnest around game 13 vs. Phoenix (11/24/13). After that, teams pretty much always tried to at least close out late on his catches. Again, the fact that he spotted up from the corners rather than the wings made it easier for defenders to cheat off of him a bit and help on the post.
Sort of licking up spit here, but that SportVU data has become publicly available now, (see:
NBA.com/Stats,
NBASavant, etc.) at least for shot attempts. So you can see the distance of nearest defender with each 3-point shot attempt. In 2013-14 the league-wide average distance of a defender from a three-point shooter was
6.11 feet. The rankings of select names, for context:
Avg Defender Distance on 3PAs (ft)4.56 Kevin Durant
4.98 Jameer Nelson
5.24 Arron Afflalo
5.30 Stephen Curry
5.33 James Harden
5.46 Dirk Nowitzki
5.90 Klay Thompson
5.95 Luke Ridnour
5.97 Kevin Love
6.11
--League Average--6.19 Ray Allen
6.20 Victor Oladipo
6.25 J.J. Redick
6.57 Ryan Anderson
6.62 Channing Frye6.70 Evan Fournier
6.76 Tobias Harris
6.93 Andrew Nicholson7.09 Trevor Ariza
7.24 Chris Bosh
7.30 Mario Chalmers
7.38 Josh McRoberts
7.45 Maurice Harkless
7.74 Roy Hibbert
8.77 Dwight Howard
Of course, this doesn't tell the whole story, as factors like team overall playmaking, shot creation, and shot selection figure into how open your shot attempts tend to be. Play with a great drive-and-kick talent (LeBron, Wall, etc.), you're likely to wind up with more open threes. Handle the ball a lot, and carry the scoring load (Durant, Curry, etc.), less so. These stats also don't show how close defenders are when the named player is off the ball. But the point is, team's did not completely sag off of Nicholson and dare him to shoot like he's Shaq or something.