Ben wrote:As to your point about it being so very difficult to learn shooting, I would just offer the counter-examples of the many big men who have learned to be passable 3P shooters.
Al Horford is the first guy who came to mind, but there are many others like him.
In Horford's first five seasons, he attempted twelve 3-pointers and made three of them.
In his sixth season he attempted six 3pointers.
The first time he attempted double-digits in 3P shots was his seventh season, age 27. He shot 11 of them.
The next year, 36. So in his first eight seasons he was 21 of 65, or 32.3% on very low volume.
And for the next four years after that, up through last season, Horford took 200+ 3-pointers each season and averaged 37.1% over that high volume period.
If he were the only guy in that category, I would say it was just something bizarre. But he's not. Seems to me that it's not an impossible task if someone really wants to learn the skill. The thing about Ben Simmons is that up until now he hasn't seemed to want that. I have hopes that he's going to get better and more confident over the coming 3-4 years.
Obviously, it's not impossible or no one would bother. My point is just that it's probably harder than people seem to think it is. It's probably arguiable that a lot of these big men aren't "learning" how to shoot - just that they had never been asked to shoot the 3 earlier in their career and are finally putting in the reps to develop that skillset. The problem with using numbers based on low volume to mark improvement is just the fallibility of statistical analysis. Anything with a small enough volume is essentially meaningless. For all we know, had he take 200+ 3s even in those first 8 seasons, it ultimately would've trended closer to what he ended up averaging. Unfortunately, we will never know.
I'm not denying that repetition might lead to someone being more comfortable to take the 3 in games. Maybe that's Ben's problem, who knows, or maybe, he's just never had to do it, so he never has.
It seems highly unlikely, however that when you job is a guard in today's NBA that you don't understand that shooting 3s is a vital part of the skillset and you do absolutely nothing to try to improve that. This is their job, they devote 100% of their working day playing basketball, I refuse to believe that Ben or literally every guard in the NBA wouldn't be attempting to improve their 3 pt shot, if it was just as easy as repetition and a good shooting coach. Which is why I think ultimately, it's hard to improve than we might think, or literally everyone would be improving. If I had to guess, I would say it's probably a lot harder to "unlearn" how they already shoot and then have a new shooting form become more natural.