Shawn Marion’s Three Point Shot
Thinking about the Dallas Mavericks’ acquisition of Shawn Marion, I looked up his numbers, and there’s really something strange going on with his three point shooting. From the 2002-2003 season through to the 2007-2008 season he consistently averaged over three three-point attempts per game, and shot them reasonably accurately. Not great, but good enough to make it a viable shot. He was a guy, in other words, that you wouldn’t want to leave open from long distance. Someone who can help space the floor and knock down shots.
Then in the 2008-2009 season his attempts crater to 0.8 per game. And a good thing, too, because his accuracy falls to .189 basically making him a guy who you never want to see take the long shot. I’ll confess that I didn’t watch him play in any games last season. Does anyone have a sense of what happened?
26 Responses to “Shawn Marion’s Three Point Shot”
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July 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
He stopped playing with Steve Nash?
July 9th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Marion is a good, not great shooter. With the Suns, he had an all-time great point guard getting him the ball with a stand-up open shot, in an offense focused on scoring, and where the defensive focus was often on other players. I’m not sure he got the same situation in Miami – I haven’t seen any of his games with them…
July 9th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
It doesn’t account for the 2002-3 or 2003-4 seasons, but there may be a Steve Nash effect here. I would guess that Marion got a lot more open looks while playing with Nash than he did otherwise. Given Marion’s unorthodox (to say the least) shooting stroke, he always struck me as someone who had a markedly different shooting percentage when he was open. I know that seems banal, but “real” shooters like Nash or Reggie Miller seem to get deep shots off even when they’re covered.
But given that Stephon Marbury was the point guard for the 2002-3 and 2003-4 Suns, my theory may be wrong.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
When you see a dropoff like that, there is only one logical explanation: Steroids.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
He stopped playing with Steve Nash?
The first season referenced was with Marbury. It looks like the answer might be, “He stopped playing in Phoenix.” Or maybe, “He stopped playing with Stat.”
July 9th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Small sample size causing statistical noise probably accounts for most of it with a dash of ‘you can’t get a rhythm shooting threes if you don’t shoot more than one per game’ along with the aforementioned ‘Steve Nash is a great passer’ variable. Plus some guys have a hard time giving a shit when playing on bad teams (Miami and Toronto) and not giving a shit usually is a drag on performance.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Marion shot most of his 3s with the Suns from the corner, and that’s a shot it’s pretty easy to become expert at, especially with Nash spacing the floor and lots of fast break opportunities. I would anticipate seeing a map of his shots to show most 3s from those years coming from the corner, a la Bruce Bowen. Now, probably not so much, which might explain accuracy. But this is anecdotal, from watching lots of Suns games.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I’m not going to say it’s all Starbury, but 2002-2004 era Stephon wasn’t chopped liver. IIRC, the Suns were a more or less .500 team, a little worse than the prior year, through the first two months of the season. Then Amare got injured and missed something like 30 games, during the middle of which Marbury was traded. I always thought that was one of the few instances where the ongoing construction of Marbury’s legacy – yet another team that dramatically improved the season after trading him! – was really unfair; the full-strength Suns of Amare’s rookie year were a good young team, and would’ve continued to improve as Amare rounded into full pre-microfracture Beastliness. Nash is clearly better – and better for the Suns – than Marbury, I just think that one piece of his career gets unfairly uncontextualized.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
In Phoenix he played in a wide open, drive-and-kick style of offense that encouraged movement and created spacing. In Miami and Toronto, he played in a more convention offense where he was encouraged to slash to the basket and get back quickly on defense, and not to wander in space looking for the wide open three. So you can say no Steve Nash or Mike D’Antonio is what happened.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
It is also worth noting that he is probably playing with fire with that unorthodox shooting style. I’m guessing his margin for error is quite low with the way he pushes the ball at the basket. When he is in a good rhythm he can make shots, but he probably has lost his rhythm with it.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
The cold weather of Toronto?
Or was he with the Heat that year??
C’mon Matt, give us the full picture.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Yeah, like Shine and others have sort of said, it’s not really a mystery. He was open in Phoenix, and he knocked down the shots. Seven seconds or less, baby!
In Miami, there’s not as much good spacing because everyone waits around for Wade to do something, so by the time Marion would get the ball (if at all) he’d be guarded and it’d be later in the shot clock. Oh, and Miami sucks ass.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
The fallof is a bit surprising because it persisted even after being traded to Toronto. My guess is a combination of age (already 30), playing the SF position more (he was always more effective as a shooter as a PF) and not playing with Amare-Nash, etc.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Like others have said, it’s pretty simple: little stevie nash. Life is good when you can just run to a spot on the floor, hold out your hands and then shoot open jumpers in rythm.
Ask rip hamilton of detroit what it feels like to lose the guy who makes your life so easy in that way.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
So then I guess everyone is seeing this as a good pick up for my Mavs. Kidd can still find the open guy, and Shawne should not have a problem finding an open spot, given the Mavs ability to score and the attention a guy like Dirk requires. I still would like to see a move that exchanges a guy like J.Howard for a guy that is better at creating his own shot from the 2 position. But I cant see how this move doesn’t make them better.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
I find a lot of these reasons unconvincing. I could see some dip in the %, but it just fell of a cliff at a relatively young age. He’s not 40. And like others have noted, he had decent 3pt shooting seasons without Steve Nash. Likewise, players like Joe Johnson haven’t totally bombed when they left Phoenix.
Undiagnosed vision problem or secret hand injury? Deal with the Devil expired?
He still rebounds like monster, though, for only being 6-7.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
By the way, with the exception of the unfortunate Yao news, the state of Texas has had a fantastic offseason so far. Still curious to see what else Houston does, though.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
But shooters performance doesn’t tend to fall off with age, it tends to get better.
I think the problem is that Marion has never been able to create for himself. He needs to be spoon-fed open looks so that he can heave up that ugly chest pass-looking thing he calls a shot. I’m pretty sure (from memory) that he’s pretty piss poor off the dribble as well. It’s pretty ironic that the guy who needs help more than anyone wanted to run off and become “The Guy” somewhere else.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Steve Nash and Mike D’Antoni certainly had a lot to do with Marion’s success.
Personally, I have never seen a more efficient offense at any level of basketball than the Suns of that era. Almost every possession someone got a wide open shot. Strangely, they did not have any great long range shooters on the team (besides Nash, one of the three or four best pure shooters ever). I think part of the reason is the Suns half-court offense included so much dribble-drive motion, where all four swing guys are required to dribble-penetrate. It is hard to find players equally adept at driving and shooting spot up threes.
And part of D’Antoni’s offensive theory is that a wide-open crappy shooter is going to hit a higher percentage of his shots than a tightly covered good shooter. Shawn Marion certainly fits into that category. Has anybody ever seen a worse shooting technique than Marion’s? I haven’t. Not at the playground, the Y, or watching a wheelchair game, and definitely not in the NBA.
I know one thing, I watched a ton of Sun’s games in the Nash/D’Antoni era, and I am convinced that if Nash had been surrounded by better shooters he would have averaged 15-17 assists per season. That is how great he was in that offense.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:06 am
He stopped playing as a power forward and got switched to small forward. As such he started getting covered by more mobile players and had a harder time getting his shot.
Kevin Pelton covers this in greater detail.
In the book :07 Seconds or Less, Jack McCallum recounts that D’Antoni and Marion went back and forth on where he should play. The coaching staff believed that Marion becomes a special player when using his quickness advantage at power forward, while he preferred to play small forward and guard players his own size. The data back up D’Antoni’s contention
http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=512
July 10th, 2009 at 1:46 am
Everyone’s right about not being in Phoenix. He was no longer getting rhythm threes. Phoenix pushed the ball so much that someone would be open in the first 10 seconds of the shot-clock every time down the floor for a pull-up. Miami plays a much slower game. He can’t shoot threes coming off a screen, or stepping-back. It’s not his game. And they aren’t going to run plays for him to shoot a three in the corner when they have much better shooters on the team.
I don’t think the skills diminished. The circumstances changed. That’s all.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:18 am
20: It’s quite clear that Marion has always been one of those players who has no f*cking clue what it is he does well.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:32 am
The real question, though, is whether Dallas will be more like Phoenix or Miami. I think he’ll get a lot of open looks in Dallas, so I’m guessing he returns to form. But it may also depend on whether he’s playing SF or PF.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Marion’s shooting form has always been a little bizarre. People with bad form are more prone to going into extremely long slumps.
I’m happy to give credit to great point guards, and less interested in age – lots of players keep their shooting percentage up as they age; it’s their defense, rebounding, and ability to create shots for themselves or others that fall off before the jumpers.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:03 am
But it may also depend on whether he’s playing SF or PF.
Yup.
I think Dallas’s best lineup will be him playing PF and Dirk at C, Howard at SF, Terry at SG and Kidd at PG. And we’ll probably see a lot of that lineup at crunch time – just like we saw a lot of the lineup with Dirk at C and Brandon Bass at PF last year. It will be a pretty difficult team to defend.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I was never a big believer in rhythm. Shooters practice shooting. There’s a lot of talent behind it, but they practice shooting a lot to get better at it. If he’s in an offence that is not likely to set him up for a shot far from the basket, he isn’t going to take a hundred 3s in every practice, nor is he going to sit at the 3pt line in the shootaround.