Super Bowl finishes, American Sniper, and WFNY turns seven: While We’re Waiting…
February 2, 2015Cavalier Film Room: Mozzy in the Middle
February 2, 2015He might have cooled off last week, but that hasn’t stopped J.R. Smith from still taking a ton of three-point shots for the streaking Cleveland Cavaliers. Now in 14 games in the Wine & Gold, the former Knick has attempted 113 threes. It’s a pretty impressive performance, as I first started tracking last Monday.
Smith is taking 12.4 shots per game with 8.1 of those shots from behind the three-point line. Only five times in NBA history has a qualified player averaged that many long-distance attempts per game over the course of a single season. As has been noted before, Smith is one of the league’s all-time gunners. He currently ranks 32nd with 3,743 career three-point attempts. At his current pace, he should easily move into the top-22 by the end of the season.
Smith only shot 7-for-28 (25 percent) from three last week. Combined with Kevin Love’s continued lackluster shooting — 6-for-26 (23 percent) from threes last week — and one might be surprised how the Cavaliers continue to blitz teams offensively. According to actual possession counts from Nylon Calculus, the Cavs have a 118.6 offensive rating in their last 11 games. That would easily be the best in the league.
For fun, here’s an updated look at the franchise’s all-time three-point shot attempt leaderboard:
48. Wayne Ellington – 143
49. Manny Harris – 128
50. Luol Deng – 127
51. Donny Marshall – 120
52. Smush Parker – 118
53. Earl Clark – 116
54. J.R. Smith – 113
55. Spencer Hawes – 105
56. Zydrunas Ilgaukas – 99
57. Eric Williams – 95
58. Christian Eyenga – 93
59. Chris Gatling – 92
60. Baron Davis – 87
Those are some incredible names that Smith passed in the last week. There’s an interesting contrast between Hawes (27 games played) and Ilgauskas (771 games played) in terms of the longevity of their Cavs contributions. Hawes is now averaging 17 minutes per game off the bench for the Los Angeles Clippers, the team with the best offense in basketball.
Skyenga (thinking of you, Brendan Bowers) and Baron Davis (traded for the rights to the Clippers lottery pick that turned out to be Kyrie Irving) are fun relics of the woeful 2010-11 season. And man, remember how Eric Williams started 36 games during LeBron James’ rookie season? Yeah, you’d really have to be a diehard fan to actually remember that.
Even with me contributing less frequently here at WFNY, I’m hoping to update this leaderboard weekly and have some fun looking back at the old Cavaliers names. There appear to be a bunch of fun names on the list for next week. Hope you’ll continue to join me.
2 Comments
But you know, unlike a lot of guys he’s passing on the leaderboard, the Cavs want him to take that shot. It’s safe to say he’s here because Dion needed to go all Castaway with the ball before launching.
Some of theses recent games, though, I’ve been surprised how many threes the whole team is taking. They shot like a crazy 30 plus against Minnesota, which has very poor interior defense and as a team took barely any FTs until the fourth quarter. That could have been fatigue, but it’s happened in a few games. [This is my thinly veiled daily plea to run some Love in the low post].
JR lost his radar against Minnesota but if you watched that same game you saw Smith sitting on the bench a lot more too. I’m not worried about all of the attempts it’s what the modern NBA has become.