Shot Analysis: Deron Williams

Deron’s performance has been kinda uneven with the Nets, but he certainly had his bright spots this season.

This is the 1st series I’m doing analyzing shot charts of the more important Nets (sans Brook Lopez because of his limited play last year) and how they fared from the field last season. We start off with the player at the helm of the Nets, Deron Williams.

For these ‘Shot Analysis’ posts that I’ll do, I’ll be using statistical support from a new (at least to me) site called VORPed.com that has shot charts from the last two seasons for every NBA player. Pretty cool, huh? The chart below is Deron’s from last season, his first one with a significant amount of games being played with the Nets.

As you can see, Deron took most of his non-layup shots behind the 3-point line along the wing. 31% from the left and nearly 40% from the right sides of the wing are each pretty good percentages for a passing-first point guard. However, D-Will’s shooting accuracy faded significantly on threes taken in either corner and from right at the top-center of the arc. 

Also as you can see, Deron’s mid-range game was much more accurate on the right side of the floor inside the 3-point arc than it was on the left. Granted, he took many more shots on the right than the left (My theory for an explanation: Because he’s a righty) therefore creating an imbalance of sample sizes between the two sides. This imbalance is significant but doesn’t really take away from the point being made.

D-Will’s best mid-range shooting percentage, however, was attained from the top of the key, where he shot a very impressive 46%. This is an interesting occurrence due to his least-accurate spot for 3-pointers being straight up the middle as the middle of the court was his most accurate mid-range shooting positions.

Furthermore, continuing the irregularities in shooting trends from D-Will’s sometimes crazy 2011-12 season, Deron shot just a putrid 28% from the right side of the 5-10 foot range from the basket while shooting a crazy hot 56.5% from the mirrored part of the key inside. That’s a more-than-50% increase from what was D-Will’s strong side for mid-range and 3-point range to his weak side in those ranges. Basketball is such a weird sport sometimes.

 

This shot chart is D-Will’s for the 2010-11 season, one in which he played 53 games with the Jazz and 12 with the Nets. The differences between this chart and the other one above representing the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons respectively are incredible and make nearly no sense at all, at least on the surface.

First off, two seasons ago, D-Will was most accurate from 3-point range in the right corner (with an admittedly small sample size) and least accurate from the left corner. By comparison, as stated above, his most accurate 3-point spot from last season was at the right wing and least accurate from at the top of the key. What could possibly account for that huge and nearly unexplainable shift in shooting tendency? Yep, him being trade from Utah to New Jersey.

According to the stats, going from EnergySolutions Arena as a home arena to Prudential Center as a home arena greatly affected Deron’s shot accuracies, which also accounts for why his mid-range and interior shooting percentage from his last year with the Jazz and first full one with the Nets show a complete mirror effect. Two seasons ago, Deron’s shooting percentage in mid-range shooting was higher on the left side than the right and his percentage in the 5-10 foot range was significantly higher on the right than the left.

Interestingly enough, this pattern in mid-range shooting from year-to-year by D-Will displays an opposite effect from what seems like just a change of home arena and team name. Obviously, much more involved and advanced research would need to be done to determine if that assessment were to hold true but according to these stat charts, it probably is.

Let’s hope that the Barclays Center leads to an exponential increase in Deron’s shooting from last season to the Nets’ upcoming debut one in Brooklyn. If not, we might see some of the terrible straightaway 3-point shooting we saw from him this past year in Newark.

STATISTICAL SUPPORT FOR THIS STORY FROM VORPED.COM