Statistical breakdown of Lonzo's 3pt shooting and a look in comparison to Graham's.

So, if we think in terms of Graham as replacing Lonzo I thought it would be useful to look at their 3 point shooting numbers. Mainly I broke down Lonzo's percentage into wins and losses. The monthly averages are easy to find as well.

Lonzo shot 37.8% on 8.3 attempts per game last season.

Graham shot 37.5% on 8.5 attempts per game.

The casual glance at this would make you think its a lateral move. They are the same player.

I contend they are vastly different and that Graham is a much better shooter than Lonzo.

I spent more time breaking down Lonzo's averages in wins and losses because I felt like the team struggled when he had off shooting nights. After looking into it he did indeed have many off nights that coincided with losses.

Consistency is so important in basketball. Streaky shooters, unless they are superior in other areas, should be relegated to the bench or even a 6th man roll at best. If they are off that night they wont get as many minutes. Its more difficult to limit a starters minutes when he is having an off night because of potential confidence issues. Lonzo does not appear to be a confident shooter.

By month:
_______Lonzo_______Graham
Dec____28.6_________33.3
Jan____33.8__________35
Feb____45.9_________34.3
Mar____35.5_________45.5
Apr_____34_________36.4
May____40__________38.6

Important context also comes from watching the highlight videos in that Graham takes a much wider range of shots with much higher difficulty while Lonzo is primarily a catch and shoot guy. If Graham only took the same shots as Lonzo last year I think he would shoot a much better percentage. He will likely have many opportunities at wide open shots with Zion and BI on the court.

Now the more telling split to me is shooting in wins and losses.

Lonzo shot 44.2% in wins and 33.2% in losses with 3 games where he shot 0/8, 0/7, and 0/6 with one win and two losses. The 0/8 was a win over OKC.

Graham shot 38% in wins and 37.2% in losses. He had one 0/5 game in a win against MIN.

This tells me Lonzo's scoring was much more important for team success than Graham's was. What I mean by this is that when Lonzo struggled to score the team struggled to win. Graham was just consistent throughout and the bulk of his teams losses were likely due to other factors outside of his scoring.


Will this move result in more wins by the team? I have no idea. But I am a huge fan of consistent play night in and night out. I think Graham will flourish playing with arguably the two best players he has ever been on the floor with. Dae pointed out that he wasn't much different in terms of defensive impact compared to Lonzo. If that holds true I think we are in for a fun ride this year.


Plus Jonas is a fairly large offensive upgrade over Adams without any dropoff defensively.

And losing Bledsoe is addition by subtraction. NAW should have gotten all of his minutes after he showed he was clearly uninterested.

Add a Buddy Hield to the mix and I think this offseason looks very good. Right now I am cautiously optimistic.

Finally, we took a few swings at big time game changers and struck out. Now we retain the flexibility to add an impact player through trade. I have my eye on a Lillard or Beal. (I can dream right?)

What's funny is that I see something completely different in those stats. Lonzo's shot is new. He completely reworked it. So it is far more inconsistent than Graham's. That's what all of you numbers show is inconsistency with Lonzo. With his work ethic, his shot will get more and more consistent and will gravitate more towards the upper numbers on your list. I think you might have accidentally stumbled upon statistical evidence that Zo is on a trajectory to be a much better shooter than Graham. Keep in mind, Lonzo is also three years younger than him.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

What's funny is that I see something completely different in those stats. Lonzo's shot is new. He completely reworked it. So it is far more inconsistent than Graham's. That's what all of you numbers show is inconsistency with Lonzo. With his work ethic, his shot will get more and more consistent and will gravitate more towards the upper numbers on your list. I think you might have accidentally stumbled upon statistical evidence that Zo is on a trajectory to be a much better shooter than Graham. Keep in mind, Lonzo is also three years younger than him.

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I agree on the inconsistency but saying that he will gravitate towards the upper end is speculation at best. He's more likely to regress to his mean in my opinion. I don't ever see him being able to take and make the type of shots that Graham takes though. Shooting off the bounce in PnR is infinitely more valuable than catch and shoot only.

Also, consistency is very difficult to achieve. I don't think Lonzo has peaked as a shooter but at the same time I don't think his new contract will be justified in the long run. They banked on potential. We went for proven consistency.

Also worth pointing out that while their per-game volume was similar, Graham's actually been higher volume per 100 each of the last two seasons. Historically high volume. Graham was a top 5 shooter by volume last season, whereas I think Lonzo was like 14th or something (still high volume but just not the same realm).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by P_B_&_G

I agree on the inconsistency but saying that he will gravitate towards the upper end is speculation at best. He's more likely to regress to his mean in my opinion. I don't ever see him being able to take and make the type of shots that Graham takes though. Shooting off the bounce in PnR is infinitely more valuable than catch and shoot only.

Also, consistency is very difficult to achieve. I don't think Lonzo has peaked as a shooter but at the same time I don't think his new contract will be justified in the long run. They banked on potential. We went for proven consistency.

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Regress to his mean would be saying that you think he has hit his average and will not improve. That I can't agree with. The thought that a kid at 22 years old completely changes his shot mechanics and then hits his career mean one year later, at 23, doesn't seem realistic. It is more likely that his average will increase.

I mean, just look at the numbers you posted. Lonzo began the season shooting 28.6 and then 33.8% from three. He then went to average near 40% for the other months. You can see his shot started shakey adjusting to the new mechanics and then settled in.

I mean, anyone can make the argument that 26 year old Graham shot the same average but more consistently than 23 year old Lonzo Ball but adding in the context that Ball completely reworked his shooting mechanics and started the first two months of the season shaky.....these statistics predict that Lonzo will be a vastly superior shooter than Graham.....and that's literally the only thing Graham had over Lonzo.

While Lonzo is a much better "new" shooter I believe he's hit his ceiling as a shooter. I highly doubt he shoots much better that 38% for a season. I'd love to know the number of "open/Wide open" shots he took this past season, and see if he gets that same number of shots in Chicago. I'd bet that number goes down.

I think Graham's percentage would be higher if he didn't take so many "tough" shots. Looking at his "highlight" video he hit a bunch of those heavily-contested shots... he wouldn't need to take those in NOLA because he'll get his share of wide open C&S opportunities playing with guys like Zion and BI.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

Regress to his mean would be saying that you think he has hit his average and will not improve. That I can't agree with. The thought that a kid at 22 years old completely changes his shot mechanics and then hits his career mean one year later, at 23, doesn't seem realistic. It is more likely that his average will increase.

I mean, just look at the numbers you posted. Lonzo began the season shooting 28.6 and then 33.8% from three. He then went to average near 40% for the other months. You can see his shot started shakey adjusting to the new mechanics and then settled in.

I mean, anyone can make the argument that 26 year old Graham shot the same average but more consistently than 23 year old Lonzo Ball but adding in the context that Ball completely reworked his shooting mechanics and started the first two months of the season shaky.....these statistics predict that Lonzo will be a vastly superior shooter than Graham.....and that's literally the only thing Graham had over Lonzo.

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Not really. Take his free throw percentage for example, which is a pretty good indicator of pure shooting ability. Lonzo's first 3 years in the league it was 45%, 41.7% and 56.6%, which is of course absolutely abysmal for a guard. Then last year he went 78% from the line, which is about average for a guard, and a drastic improvement from his career numbers. Now you could consider that dramatic improvement to constitute a sustainable trend that will continue and predict Lonzo's FT percentage will be better next year, or you could see the 78 percent as an outlier and predict that his FT percentage next year will be less than 78 percent. Either way you are guessing, trying to interpret the pattern from the data. I would be more inclined to bet that his FT percentage will regress because I am skeptical that such a big leap is sustainable, it doesn't indicate consistency to me. Looking at Graham, he has been in the league for 3 years and his FT percentage was 76%, 82%, 84%. That shows consistency, but also shows improvement year to year. So there is no reason to believe that Graham won't continue to improve after being in the league 3 years.

Lonzo took nearly one additional open/wide open 3 per game than Graham last season. Graham took 2 threes per game against either tight or very tight defense last season, compared to Lonzo's 0.8 attempts.

Graham shot 39% on those open/wide open shots, whereas Lonzo shot 37%. Assuming shooting remains linear, We should see a bump in Graham's efficiency and a decrease in Lonzo's. To further emphasize this point, Lonzo shot 3.4 wide open 3s per game (6+ feet to nearest defender), whereas Graham shot 2.2 per game.

Age is not really a great indicator for shooting, considering athleticism does not really play much of a factor. It makes no difference to me that Graham is 26 and Lonzo is 23. Both are in their prime and will be for the entirety of their contracts. If anything, you would want to surround Zion with the guy who is further into his prime.

If we want to talk about FT% being a predictor for 3p shooting, Devonte Graham shot 84% on over twice the attempts as Lonzo. I know Lonzo's FT% looks pretty in comparison to prior seasons, but his sample size is so small that if he missed only 8 more free throws, he would be shooting under 70%.

It should finally be noted, while not objective fact, that some the Hornets bloggers/writers believe that his injury last season was the reason for his drop in pull up 3%. See below tweet. Lonzo doesn't and will never have this in his bag because he doesn't have the functional athleticism or coordination necessary. Lonzo is a stationary shooter.

Devonte? Graham shot 34.4% on pull-up 3-pointers in 2019-2020 (10th in the NBA on >4 attempts) but he?s down to 29% this season.

Hopefully that goes back up when he returns from injury, his shooting gravity with the ball in hand is important to the offense

— Chase (@chasewhitney_) February 10, 2021