Welcome to the NBA Hater Report: A breakdown of some of the players, teams and trends around the league that are drawing the ire of yours truly. If you're not a fellow pessimist, proceed with caution.
1. Wemby is NOT a good shooter (right now)
Victor Wembanyama entered the 2024-25 NBA season carrying outsized expectations, at least from the outside, on his 20-year-old shoulders. I picked him to win Defensive Player of the Year and I'm certainly not alone in that belief. Some have gone as far as to say he'd already be an MVP-level player if he wasn't on a bad team that gives him no actual shot at the award.
The Spurs are three games into the season, and it's time to slow down.
This isn't to say that Wembanyama isn't an extraordinary talent or that he isn't going to be an MVP one day or even that he's not already an extremely good player; Anthony Davis is making me think twice about who the actual best defensive player in the league is, but wherever Wembanyama ranks, it's pretty damn high.
Offensively, it's a bit of a different story. The numbers are going to pop because he is, as a total package, pretty great. But there are holes.
Specifically, let's look at Wembanyama's shooting, which, to this point, has been largely celebrated through the prism of potential and propped up by "for his size" qualifiers but has never actually measured up to the narrative.
Through three games this season, Wembanyama has missed 14 of his 18 3-point attempts and has made just six out his 24 overall jump shots, per Synergy. Small sample? Of course. But last year he made just 31% of his jump shots and just 33% of his 3s even after the All-Star break when his numbers exploded across the board.
"The conditioning is not an excuse," Wembanyama said of his poor shooting after a 5-for-18 showing in San Antonio's season-opening loss to Dallas. "For the missed shots ... it's just taking shots in rhythm. That's the most important for me. I think I'm comfortable in every area of the floor to shoot, but at the same time if I'm not in rhythm any area of the floor I'll miss."
Speaking to the conditioning, Wembanyama only played in two of the Spurs' five preseason games after a busy summer with the French national team at the Paris Olympics, where he led his country to the silver medal. But, it should be noted, he shot just 28% from 3 in Paris with the shorter FIBA line.
Is Wemby tired from a lack of game-speed action over the 10 weeks leading into the season? Or is he tired from the long summer requiring too much action? Either way, the beginning of a new season can always be a junky sample. Everyone gets their rhythm at different points and in different ways. But again, this isn't just this year. Wembanyama has never been a particularly good shooter.
What he has been is a particularly impressive shooter relative to his size who can, and sometimes does, make shots that make you think you're watching an alien. I'm thinking of the one-legged 3-pointer in the Olympics. Fade aways. Deep 3s. Get-into-his-bag pull-up jumpers. Things 7-foot-4 dudes are not really supposed to be able to do.
But so far, it's this capability that has too often fooled Wembanyama into thinking he should actually be taking even a decently regular diet of these shots (six 3s per game, so far), because once in a while he makes them. Wemby has total freedom, it seems, to do as he pleases from any spot on the floor as he focuses developing into a go-to offensive player by way of explorative repetition, and indeed the results aren't nearly as important as the experience at this stage.
We've seen him quickly progress as a passer. His recognition of how he's being defended is better and faster. But don't confuse his relative-to-size shooting for actual shooting. Potential is great, and we can all see it plain as day, but in the end Wemby's jump shots simply do not go down at anywhere near a league-average rate. Until they do, he's going to open season for the Hater Report.
2. Enough with all the 3-pointers
Keeping on the topic of shooting, only one team averaged 40 3-point attempts per game last season, the Boston Celtics, who fired up 42.5 per night. This season, the Celtics have ballooned that number to 50.3, and nine other teams are shooting more than 40 3s per game.
We all get the math, but this sucks to watch. Anthony Edwards, a positively electric penetrator and high-flying athlete the likes of which the league has rarely seen, is turning into Klay Thompson. Last year, Ant attempted 6.7 3s per game; this season he's taking over 13. Edwards is one of seven players who are shooting at least 10 3s per game so far last season only two players cracked that threshold.
Through four games, 53 of Edwards' 90 shots have come from behind the arc. That's an attempt rate of 58.9%, a bigger number than James Harden has ever recorded and on par with the most 3-point voluminous season of Stephen Curry's non-garbage-time career, per Cleaning the Glass.
There are structural reasons for this. Minnesota lost at elite spacer in Karl-Anthony Towns (whom we'll talk about in a minute) and replaced him with Julius Randle, a total non-spacer. With a more cramped paint, it will, to some degree, force Edwards to shoot more from the outside. That doesn't, for haters like me, make it any more appealing to watch.
Right now, Edwards is making them at a 41.5% clip, so it's hard to hate on the practice. But he's been a league-average 3-point shooter at best throughout his career; 36.9% in 2022-23 is the best he has ever managed.
Chances are, this hot shooting won't continue. But even if it does, we're losing the delineation between what used to be a more eclectic sampling of styles; some guys shot 3s because they were uniquely good at it, while other guys kept more to the mid-range. A few big guys stepped out beyond the arc and that made them different, but now the only thing that makes them different is if they don't shoot 3s.
Turning Anthony Edwards into Klay Thompson is completely destroying everything that makes him unique. Now, nobody is unique. Jayson Tatum, Stephen Curry, Anthony Edwards, small guys, big guys, all the in-between guys, everyone just shoots 3s now. Even if they're not particularly good at it. They shoot 3s in transition, 3s off the catch, 3s off the dribble. They shoot 3s that until relatively recently would've been frowned upon by every basketball coach on the planet.
Where does it stop? How long until damn near the only shots anyone takes are 3-pointers? Again, we all get the math, and 3-pointers are exceedingly fun when they are merely a slice of the shooting pie, even a big slice. But they can't be the whole pie. NBA games aren't supposed to be a backyard game of HORSE. Unfortunately, it feels like it's getting closer to that every day.
3. KAT needs to ... shoot more 3s!
Let's not get it twisted: I am not, in any way, anti 3-pointer. Anyone who has ever played hoops with me can vouch for that. What I am is anti everyone-shoots-3s. If you're good at it, you should shoot them, and Karl-Anthony Towns isn't just good at it, he's great at it.
Unlike the aforementioned Wembanyama, who requires the "for his size" qualifier before you can attempt to label him as even a passable shooter, Towns, even at seven feet tall, is a career 40% 3-point shooter. Heck, he's made 66% of his 3s this season. Problem is, he's only take six of them through three games.
All told, Towns has only taken 28 shots of any kind. That's an average of 9.3 per game, down from 15.3 last season in Minnesota. After Towns managed just eight shots in a loss to Cleveland on Monday, Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson shouldered the blame for failing to get his shooting big man more involved.
"It's on me as a teammate to make sure we're all on the same page and that everyone's eating," Brunson said. "I've got to be better when it comes to that. I've got to adjust, and I've got to see [Towns]."
Good on Brunson for taking the responsibility here as the quarterback, but Towns also has to be a much more aggressive scorer. That's why the Knicks traded for him. To shoot 3s and be a No. 2 scorer next to Brunson.
The Knicks are only a contender if Towns is enough of an offensive upgrade to counteract the interior defensive loss of Isaiah Hartenstein and, at present, Mitchell Robinson. Shooting nine shots and two 3-pointers per game just isn't going to cut it.
