What is wrong with Jayson Tatum’s 3 point shooting?
He’s always been a streaky shooter, but he is having the worst stretch of his career, and it’s not close. After starting a super hot start to 2024, he has been one of the worst shooters in the league since April – 27.9% to be exact.
I just don’t get it and feel like most fans haven’t really noticed just how bad it’s been because the conversation around his play has been absolutely ridiculous. He’s been playing some of the best basketball of his career but he just can’t shoot threes anymore.
I broke his shooting down for games since April and it’s worse than I could’ve imagined. I’m actually starting to get alarmed.
He’s shot 17% or worse in 43% of his games since the start of April.
What the hell is going on?
by tommypoints4days
28 Comments
Im gonna skip this conversation and watch the parade in its entirety on YouTube for the 34th time, thank you.
I’m not a shooting coach but I’ve seen enough people around the internet criticizing it to believe something is off. Usually if someone is quirky but works, you don’t address it until it’s stops working, but maybe it’s gone on for too long at this point in his career…hopefully he won’t evolve into Ben Simmons trying to get it fixed bc every other aspect of his game is solid.
When he’s not averaging 27 ppg I’ll start paying attention. He’s a very good player who just had one of his best seasons. He shot 47% from the floor.
Not sure why you cut it off at April.
His shooting numbers dip in the playoffs because he is the focus of the defense of good teams. He has barely shot in the Olympics. Y’all need to relax.
I think it is a problem. Hopefully he figures it out by next season. But at the same time, they did win the chip so I get why people don’t care right now.
I firmly believe that Tatum has needed wrist surgery for the better part of 3 full seasons now. Every so often you see him grabbing his always taped shooting wrist. It’s now gotten to the point where his shot is seriously impacted. Surgery should be on the table if my worries are correct.
he got hitch on the load up (the humping the ball part lol) which makes it easier to contest & so much muscle + his shot just cold
Complete speculation – I am no NBA expert. I noticed that this seemed to happen to Jaylen as well. My thought is that the extensive strength training is throwing off his groove a bit until he gets used to shooting with a stronger body. Willing to bet he bounces back big time if that is the case.
Is it his wrist? If so, it’s frustrating that he won’t have a real offseason to address or rest it. Is it his form? If so, I hope he seeks out a new shooting coach as Drew Hanlen hasn’t been able to improve his form.
Good luck trying to have an honest discussion on this subreddit though, it’s generally known that you’re not allowed to have any critical discussions here. I applaud your effort though for at least attempting to discuss this issue.
Maybe he’s just tired
Still drunk from the parade.
I guess some mental block. You usually “unblock” yourself by sheer volume in regular season but forget about it at Olympics. He’s under such scrutiny, he might not try 3 there again. Let’s just hope he figure it out off-seaons, but it’s going to be short one.
As fans we’re incredibly fortunate we can have one of our superstars brick from the perimeter and still be good enough to easily win a championship
Drew Hanlen is a snake oil salesmen. Simple as that. It’s crazy how many people stick up for him and protect him. If I get any responses to this comment it will people defending him to the death. It’s genuinely fucking weird the cult like, Taylor Swift level fanboy following he has.
I think his form has way too much room for error just by the looks of it. A quicker release would have to be way better for his accuracy but it doesn’t seem like that will change. Never know though. I miss the rookie release.
He’s had tape around that wrist all year. Still a lingering injury?
Look at his career from start to finish. Pretty sure he’s gotten worse. Maybe due to bulking up?
His shot is inconsistent because his form keeps changing.
If forced to come up with something, outside he’s played a lot of basketball:
Maybe the wrist? it’s likely more a bad habit he developed somewhere in his shooting as a result of that injury (even if it’s now fully healed).
I’m no expert, but I am not seeing anything different in his shooting.
He says he’s fine and I’ll take his word. It’s just a really bad stretch that he will figure out. Not too worried.
I’m the playoffs when ever Tatum took one step inside the arc he was met with a wall so in frustration and an effort to score he started to take poor and hard threes and then missed and got out of rhythm
man all the fan takes on this topic 🤣
The problem with looking at shooting percentage in a vacuum is that variation is mostly due to differences in shot quality.
This year, in the regular season, Tatum shot 43% on catch-and-shoot threes and 35% on pull-up threes. Last year, he shot 40% on catch-and-shoots and 29% on pull-ups.
The year before that, 38% and 33%. The year before that, 44% and 36%. His 3P% in those years doesn’t always reflect how he shot, just when he shot.
His FT% is very consistent year to year, with a slight dip this year from ~85% to ~83%. That potentially indicates some problems with adding more muscle? Probably not anything major, though.
I think the idea that this is mainly a wrist injury thing seems improbable given that consistency once you start filtering down to specific shot types. Maybe it has something to do with it, obviously I wouldn’t know for sure. But I think a “Ben Simmons but good” outcome is really unlikely given all of this. Teams sell out HARD to prevent Tatum from getting catch-and-shoot shots and getting a rhythm going. He plays much more physically than he used to, and on a team where he’s the 4 and not the 3 he has to do a lot more fighting for boards and screening. When he gets open easy shots, and we have a large enough sample to filter out some of the noise, we know that he knocks them down. Clearly, given this year, he does not need to be a pull-up flamethrower for this team to be effective.
Of course, I’d love to see him shoot better after dribbling and in the playoffs. I certainly wonder if part of the catch-and-shoot vs. pull-up disparity is due to differences in shooting form or stuff that could be ironed out. But 3P% is a stat that needs hundreds of attempts to really draw big conclusions from, and if NBA coaches seem to think Tatum will cook them from deep if given the chance I’m not going to lose much sleep over it.
My theories:
1. JT is a confidence & streaky shooter. If he starts a game strong, shooting well, he can get hot and explode the remainder of the game. Very rarely do I see him start 0-3, and end up like 5-4.
So if the flow of the game dictates him to shoot a lot of 3’s and he didn’t start hot.. we in trouble hah. I also believe this is why his clutch 3 numbers aren’t great. And yes.. he has had some monster signature games. But again.. that’s when he’s really feeling it, and hasn’t happened much the last 2+ years.
2. JT’s body is -completely- different than college and when he entered the league. He’s Huge Jackman now. Which is great for his defense, post game, driving, etc. However.. gaining a lot of muscle mass, will 1000% fuck with your shooting stroke.
I’m a 6’6” 3-point shooter, who played a fair amount of competitive ball (pro-am, overseas, etc.). I also oscillated a lot over the years.. between being more naturally lean, and a jacked gym rat.
Every time I either gained or lost a fair bit of body mass, my shot would go to complete shit. I basically had to re-train my body, form, mechanics, etc. from the ground up all over again. Also if you’re bruising with centers on defense, etc. Your arm muscles lose some fine-tune calibration, around more finesse shooting.
The good news is.. we now have a Carmelo Anthony on our team. Who is legit 6’10”, and can play some serious bully ball. Plus he’s an intelligent & humble playmaker, who can play point-forward and defense like Scottie Pippen. The downside? Our dead-eye Reggie Miller is gone. The truth is, we may never get that version of JT back consistently 🤷♂️
It’s not very good
Maybe still the wrist that got injured against Giannis but who knows.
It’s been a while now he’s been wearing wraps around his wrist and thumb.
It’s also been talked about the past 2 off seasons if I remember correctly and he’s putting off surgery
Thanks for the Data OP. I have definitely noticed how bad his shooting has been since April. Unfortunately, on Reddit people typically get called a hater for any amount of real constructive criticism. Smh.
Anyway, I really can’t figure out what his deal is. I thought it was a slump and he’d be back to normal in a week or 2. But that never happened. I think he knows it to cause he started putting the ball on the floor way more in the playoffs in order to be more effective at the offensive end. Which was a welcome sight to be sure. Hope he figures it out soon.
Drew hanlen sucks
He’s added an extra hitch to his shot. It’s something technical that is off