FanPost

Is Nick Young an efficient volume shooter?


There has been much speculation, many arguments and lots of back and forth in the Kanter This, Kanter That fan post about whether Nick Young qualifies as an "efficient" scorer. Obviously, those who look at his current 53.8% True Shooting Percentage would argue that he's slightly below averag. Those folks (zl I'm pointing at you) would argue that because the League average True Shooting Percentage is 54.2% (hoopdata), that Nick Young is a below average efficiency scorer...

However, I've often maintained that a player that shoots less often will always have the advantage over a volume shooter. Players like Aaron Aflalo (62% TSP), Jodie Meeks (61.7% TSP) and Daequan Cook (59.1% TSP), who pick and choose when they want to shoot, and put up less than the League average 7.8 shots a night have the distinct advantage over players that are relied upon by their teams to be the main "go to" scorers every night.

So instead of comparing apples (Aflalo) to Oranges (Young), let's compare Nick Young to the other Guards in the League who are "volume" shooters.

First - how do we define a "volume" shooter? Well, league average is 7.8 shots per game - and the highest volume shooters in the NBA are Derrick Rose (20.2 shots per game) and Monta Ellis (20.2 shots per game). Let's split the difference and say that 14 or more shots per game constitutes a "volume" shooter. (I ran it with fewer shots, 12, 13, etc... there were more results, but the conclusions were the same)...

Nickyoung_medium

As you can see from the chart above, Nick Young looks better than Joe Johnson and Brandon Jennings - but not one of the top Guards in efficiency for volume shooters...

Why was I so adamant that Nick Young was one of the most efficient scorers in the League? What was I seeing on the court that these numbers don't show? Why does Nick's TSP look so pedestrian when compared to other volume shooting guards in that chart?

Context....

Prior to Nick's knee injury, his TS% was much higher. He sat out the Orlando game, just prior to the All-Star break. Came back after the break with a couple strong games against Miami and Golden State in between terrible shooting nights in the other three games - but then missed another game against Minnesota; and has been out of the line up 7 of the last 9 games. The point is that, since the All-Star break Nick has not looked "right"; at least he has not looked like the Nick Young we saw in the first 50 games.

Nicktsp_medium

If we look at Nick's True Shooting Percentage over time, we see that up until the All Star break, he was consistently around 56%-57% - he was one of the 5 or 6 most efficient volume shooting Guards in the NBA. Since the All-Star break, there has been a precipitous drop off... In games after the All Star break, his TS% is only 49.8% (Jordan Crawford territory). Obviously, a rational person could make a convincing argument that Nick's knee injury, which occurred just prior to the All-Star break, has contributed a great deal to the drop in his efficiency.

One could also argue that when healthy, Nick Young is one of the more efficient volume shooting guards in the NBA.

This represents the view of the user who wrote the FanPost, and not the entire Bullets Forever community. We're a place of many opinions, not just one.