His close scoring is a little above average, and his drives are a little below average (drives are the only scoring category in which he is below average). Both his pull up twos and pull up threes are decent - just under 0.25 PAA for both. Where he really excels is his catch and shoot shots. At catch and shoot twos he contributes 0.387 PAA, 26th in the league and third for guards, trailing only JJ Redick and DeMar DeRozan. That's good, but it is his catch and shoot threes that set him apart. On those, he contributes 2.8 PAA, which blows away all the other competition. Only three other players (Klay Thompson, JR Smith, and Ryan Anderson) have even above even 2 PAA, and none of those are close to Korver. Just to try to put it better into comparison, his z-score for three point catch and shoot shots is 5.6. That's how dominant he is in that area.
The rest of his game isn't bad either. He is below average in rebounding, but above average in both passing and rim defense. He doesn't have really impressive numbers there, but its enough to remind you that he isn't just a one trick pony, he's actually good at basketball. Who would have thought?
I'll spend a little bit more time looking at how exactly he is so dominant at catch and shoot threes, although Lowe did already break down some of the SportVu data in his post. He attempted 4.8 catch and shoot threes a game, which is actually only eigth best in the league behind Ryan Anderson, Klay Thompson, Wilson Chandler, Wesley Matthews, Channing Frye, Trevor Ariza, and Kevin Love (in that order). However, Korver hit over half of those shots (50.5%) which is by far and away the best. Of the players above him, the most accurate one was Trevor Ariza, who shot just over 44%, more than six percentage points behind him. Kevin Love shot 40.6%. Kevin Durant shot 38.5%. Klay Thompson shot 43.9%.
Speaking of Klay Thompson, the only thing I disagreed with in the Lowe article was when he said that there was no other player like Kyle Korver. Klay Thompson is actually a very similar player. He handles the ball the little bit more, so he had more pull up shots and drives, and is a slightly better rebounder and rim defender, but those differences are small. Klay gets most of his points by catch and shoot threes, like Korver, and overall they are very similar. Obviously Klay is younger and has more room to develop, but the fact that the Warriors won't trade him for Kevin Love and that the Hawks were criticized for signing Kyle Korver shows just how underrated Korver is. Obviously Klay is a lot younger and has more potential, but I still feel like Korver is greatly underrated.
Hopefully Kyle Korver day will go a long way to fixing that.
PS: I got a twitter. Follow me @aabsblog to get updates of my blog postings. I might even follow back ;)
So apparently Zach Lowe decided to make it Kyle Korver Day over at Grantland, which I don't have problem with at all. By my stat he's one of the most under-appreciated players in the league, all because of one skill: his shooting ability. I think everyone realizes that he's a great shooter, but I don't think people realize just how great he is. The rest of his game is mostly above average - not great but not terrible either. Lets take a look.
2 Comments
crow
7/29/2014 11:16:48 am
Fyi- first paragraph looks repeated to me.
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Raging Rondo
7/29/2014 11:24:08 am
Thanks! Fixed.
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April 2015
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