It’s true! We knew his shooting stroke was improved so far and he was taking more jumpers but here are the actual numbers. Last year he was 13 of 59 (22%) on shots NBA.com classifies as jump shots. This year he’s already made 16 of 34 (47.1%). He’s also made three more three pointers than all of last year as well. Through 51 games last year he attempted only 10 three’s and through 7 games this year he’s already attempted 15. Here is his shot chart from last year to this year:

The way the Spurs Sixers base motion offense works is that the first big runs to the block and other big trails the play. Davies looks fairly comfortable coming down as the trailing big and knocking down that rhythm jump shot from the top of the key. Very similar to the way Thad did it last year.

Davies is also shooting much better inside the arc as he’s gone from 43.6% on 2 pointers last year up to 60% this year which is a huge jump. Looking at the two pointers even more, his shots with 0 dribbles is up 22.4% over the previous year (46.8% - 69.2%) which means he is doing a better job at catching the ball in rhythm and putting it up.

These marks are impressive thus far in the young season and it will be interesting to see if they continue at this pace. Whats most interesting to me is that Tony Wroten has also shown improved shooting numbers from last year as well. KJ McDaniels wasn’t supposed to be a good outside shooter and he’s currently leading all rookies with 42.1% and before last night was top 25 in the league from behind the line. Alexey Shved’s three point numbers have bounced back up. Noel is hitting jumpers. Hell even Henry Sims made a three pointer! Is there something more here?

I’ll be very interested to see what Michael Carter-Williams’ shooting numbers look like once he gets back into the groove of the game after shoulder surgery. What if Brett Brown is just as good or better than we thought he was going to be at developing young players and their shots? Wroten, Davies, MCW and Noel have all had a full year under his tutelage and we know that, with the exception of MCW, they’ve shown improvement in their jump shots. Could Brett Brown be the real deal as far as development goes? If he is good enough to get BRANDON DAVIES to shoot almost league average from behind the line we might have a savant on our hands.



