Jeff Goodman @GoodmanESPN 9m9 minutes ago
Jamal Murray hit 79 of 100 3’s in Boston last week. Buddy Hield, per source, hit 85 of 100 in front of Celtics brass today in California.
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But the question is, how many threes would jamal Murray hit 3 years from now?
Based on wonky math...
Hield shot an uncharacteristic .457% from three this season (surrounded by other great three point shooters... only shot .359% last season)... he managed to hit 85 of 100 open shots. Considering that he only shot .238% from three as a Freshman, we can guesstimate that Hield would hit 44/100 when he was the same age as Murray.
Meanwhile, Murray shot .408% as a Freshman and made 79 of 100 open shots. If Murray saw a similar jump in 3P% to Hield (from .238 to .457 = 1.92x greater), Murray would see his 3P% jump from .408% to .783% by his Senior year... and thus, if Murray was the same age as Hield, he'd hit 152 out of 100 open shots.
Pretty definitive.
True. Although to be fair, Hield appears to double every 3 years, so three years from now he'll be making ~190 and approaching the sacred 6 pps.
To be fair, Hield saw his 3p% drop from sophomore to junior years and it's pretty likely a large part of his success as a Senior had to do with experience, age, and additional elite shooters surrounding him. And based on the evidence that players make the more significant progression before the age of 24, Hield has about a year to continue any major progress. Murray has 4.
Sure, except some pretty flawed assumptions:
1) That 19 year old players will typically improve on their single *strongest* attribute (as opposed to their many weaknesses). Murray will probably become a better all-around player, yes. Whether his shooting changes much is highly questionable. Keep in mind if he never did improve on defense etc, he might not even belong in the NBA.
2) Hield suddenly benefiting from his teammates as a Senior. Who knows... clearly the age and experience helped him, but a) he maximized those factor, not everyone does; and b) Age is already factored in a bit here. Hield was a significantly better college player last year.
3) Player growth is probably a mixture of actual age, and experience. They both have zero NBA experience, where a lot of that growth happens. A player that makes the leap to the NBA 4 years sooner doesn't just pick up an extra 4 years of development at the pro level. I'd say it's condensed a bit.
To me, the biggest thing people are missing is not that Murray is young (which certainly DOES imply a lot of upside remaining), but that he's also not a very good all-around player yet, and could easily be 2 years behind Hield right now, which mitigates the age thing a good amount. Whether Hield can continue to grow is of course highly subjective.
Topic: Buddy Hield, per source, hit 85 of 100 3's in front of Celtics brass today (Read 24553 times)