I'm a Nik Stauskas hater - or at least I was. Up until tonight, I've believed that he should just be cut from the team. Straight up. I've recently found a bit more hope in Stauskas, in how to "fix" him and make at least a productive offensive player out of the kid.

Nik's calling card offensively and his ticket to remaining on the team and in the NBA moving forward is his 3PT shooting. Career 34.3% shooting from deep and a career high last season of 36.8% doesn't scream "specialist" though. It doesn't look like anything special at all honestly. But, when you look a little deeper you begin to see the potential for Nik to reach that 40% threshold we deem "elite" and hold so dearly to our heart.

On catch-and-shoot attempts, Nik actually shot an impressive 41.2% from 3. This places him above guys like Isaiah Thomas, Seth Curry, Patty Mills, and Gallinari, and within 1.3% of guys like Luke Babbit, Kyle Lowry, Bradley Beal, Kevin Durant, and CJ McCollum. A pretty elite crew filled with guys we'd all consider to be elite shooters. Nik fits right in. Hell, from the corner he shot an astounding 48.5% this year! This is really great stuff. You must be asking yourself then, where does Nik go wrong?

We need to work on the types of shots he's taking. Catch-and-shoot shots only represent 61.9% of Nik's total 3PAs. Let's compare this to the other elite shooters of the NBA, shall we? Catch-and-shoot shots represent 71.7% of JJ Redick's 3s, 94.1% of Otto Porter's 3s, 79.3% of Kyle Korver's 3s, 81.2% of Ryan Anderson's 3s, and 86.6% of Klay Thompson's 3s just to run off a few guys. There's a clear gap here that needs to be remedied and addressed.

These are the best shooters in the NBA. If anyone has the right and the ability to take pull-up 3s, it's them for the most part. Despite this, it's Stauskas gunning the pull-up shots. To make matters worse, he shoots an abysmal 27.8% on pull-up 3s. Some of the guys I named were still above average shooters even on purely pull-up shots - guys like Redick and Korver were both around 40% still. There definitely were exceptions though.

Klay Thompson for example shoots just 29.3% on pull-ups, yet still remains one of the deadliest shooters of all time and above 40% for the season.

Looking at the data, the way to fix Nik's shooting is pretty simple - just reel him in a bit and control the type of shots he's shooting.

Let's also go back to that statistic on his corner shooting - Nik is a 48.5%3PT shooter from the corner. Once again though, Nik suffers from a very similar issue. Only 18.9% of his 3s came in the corner this year. This one is not as much of an issue as the previous, only ~14% of Redick's 3s came from the corner, but it could certainly be worked on. 40% of Porter's 3s, 27% of Korver's 3s, and 27% of Klay's 3s came from the corner. In terms of percentage from the corner, Stauskas actually has guys like Redick, Porter, and Klay beat in this regard.

To sum this up, there's a 40%3PT shooter in Nik Stauskas, and we know where he's hiding. By getting Nik to take more catch-and-shoot 3s rather than pull-ups and putting him in that corner where he's so deadly more often we can bring out his talent and make his efficiency skyrocket. Combine this with his above average AST Ratio for a SG and you'd have a positive offensive player, and one who greatly fits our team's desperate need of shooting.

EDIT - CREDITS TO STONERSIXER FOR POINTING THIS OUT AND GETTING ME TO LOOK THIS UP

Nik also seems to take a ton of shots at the end of the shot clock; he is often left with the ball and has to chuck up bad attempts at the buzzer. 27.6% of Nik’s 3s came within the range that would be considered "late" in the shot clock, 7 seconds or less, and Nik shot a measly 25% in these scenarios. His shoots ~ 41% on 3s in the range of 7-24 seconds in the clock. Looking at the same crop of shooters as earlier, only 14.4% of Porter’s 3s, 11% of Redick’s 3s, 10.4% of Korver’s 3s, 9.5% of Anderson’s 3s, and 10% of Klay’s 3s came in that "late" range. Once again, we see a huge discrepancy that needs to be addressed and is gravely impacting his efficiency.