Leonard currently ranks second among qualified players in 3-point accuracy, having knocked down a ridiculous 48.4 percent of his threes. Before this season, his career high had been 37.9 percent (on 2.8 threes per game) and his high for attempts per game was 3.0; this year, he’s taking 3.8 per game and shattering his career numbers. Merely putting a shooting threat of that magnitude on the floor can dramatically grease the wheels of offensive efficiency: Since 1997-98,1 teams whose regular lineups featured a guy hitting at least 45 percent of his threes scored 2.7 more points per 100 possessions than their peers. But Leonard is more than just a long-distance sniper.
On top of his range, he also rates among the league’s best defenders (his +3.4 defensive Box Plus/Minus is in the 97th percentile of NBA players) and scorers (95th percentile in points per 36 minutes), with above-average rebounding (69th percentile in rebound rate) and passing (57th percentile in assist rate) thrown in for good measure. Leonard’s all-around excellence this season has placed him squarely in the mix with Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook and LeBron James for the mantle of NBA’s Best Player™.
The typical sharpshooter at the level of Leonard this season is, and always has been, limited in other areas. Going back to ’97-98 again, the average top-five-ranked shooter by 3-point percentage profiles as follows: a highly efficient scorer2 and solid passer who’s also in the bottom half of NBA players in usage rate, the bottom third in defensive BPM and close to the bottom quarter in rebound rate. So, by and large, these are not all-around dynamos — they’re in the game to shoot the lights out, and maybe do a little ball handling. Anything else is gravy, but outside the job description.
I'm not usually the biggest fan of FiveThirtyEight but this is pretty interesting.
