NJ SixerFan wrote:I get your variance argument but **** does it have to vary so much. He either can't hit water shooting in the ocean or barely touches the net when he's on. Problem is we need him to be a threat night in and night out.
I don't think you understand the bolded or you wouldn't be making the rest of that comment.
I'd have to compare him to other high volume 3 point shooters who take a large percentage of their shots from 3. For his career, Covington is averaging 6.4 3PA per game, and that accounts for 64.1% of his total shots (3PAr).
Last season there were 6 players that had >= 5 3PA per game with a 3PAr >= 60%: Covington, Wes Matthews, JR Smith, Isaiah Canaan, CJ Miles, Kyle Korver. Covington had both the most 3PA per game and the highest 3PAr of all of these players.
Of these players, Canaan, Matthews, and Miles had the most similar 3P% and volume to Covington, all finishing within 1.5% points of each other (between 35.3% and 36.7%) so it makes the most sense to compare them. All of these players took between 6.0 and 7.2 3s per game.
I'm going to arbitrarily choose a "Dud" as a game where the player had at least 5 3PA and shot < 20% from 3. This would mean that players shot greater than 15% worse than their season average.
Covington had 51 games where he took at least 5 shots and within those games had 8 games where he shot <20% from 3.
Canaan had 58 games where he took at least 5 shots and within those games had 12 games where he shot <20% from 3.
Matthews had 60 games where he took at least 5 shots and within those games had 10 games where he shot <20% from 3.
Miles had 46 games where he took at least 5 shots and within those games had 8 games where he shot <20% from 3.
This means that the "Dud %" looks like:
Covington: 15.7%
Canaan: 20.7%
Matthews: 16.7%
Miles: 17.4%
Total: 17.7%
Covington actually had the lowest Dud percentage of the four comparable players despite shooting the greatest volume per game and having the lowest 3 point % of the four players.
I'm going to make a few points now:
1) The human brain is terrible about identifying false patterns and designing whatever narrative it wants to believe in, especially over small and recent samples.
2) 3 point shooting is extremely high variance. All of these players are above average 3 point shooters and shoot high volume, yet each player can expect a miserable shooting night slightly more frequently than once every six games.
3) In this sample, Covington does not appear to be significantly more feast or famine than comparable players.