When it comes to chucking 3s in the NBA, quantity is the name of the game — but what about consistency?

When it comes to chucking 3s in the NBA, quantity is the name of the game — but what about consistency?

Last season, the Miami Heat had some guys throwing real knuckleballs from downtown. James Johnson’s 3-point shot is said to still be completing its first rotation. However, Miami did have one guy on the other end of the spectrum in particular--Wayne Ellington, journeyman, and sharpshooter.

Ellington averaged six 3s per game and knocked down nearly 38 percent of them — he was one of 16 NBA players to do so in 2017.

Ellington didn’t just have a good season from deep, though; he had a consistent one as well. Ellington’s 3-point shooting yielded a standard deviation of .219 (a measure of how far Ellington’s variances are from the mean for his 3-point percentage for 2016-17).

For context, in 2017, James Johnson’s 3-point shooting yielded a standard deviation of .302. Stephen Curry’s was .173, similar to 2007-08 Ray Allen's mark of .174 when the Boston Celtics won the title, which is crazy when you consider these guys shoot around 40 percent from 3.

Ellington not only takes and makes the most 3s in South Beach, but he is also very reliable game to game and shot to shot.

Goran Dragic (40.5), Dion Waiters (39.5) and Luke Babbitt (41.1) shot a better percentage from 3 than Ellington last year. However, they all had higher standard deviations than Ellington — considerably so in the cases of Dragic and Babbitt. Though they all enjoyed a higher shooting percentage in the aggregate, they weren’t as true to their season-long shooting percentages as Ellington, game to game, shot to shot.