Which NBA players can count on better results in 2019?
For most NBA players who are off to slow starts, there's still time to turn things around.
After Saturday's analysis of the teams poised to play better in 2019 than the first two and a half months of the season, let's turn our attention to the players who haven't shown their best performance yet.
Golden State Warriors
Shooting guard
Thompson has dealt with a much-publicized downturn on 3s this season, going from a career-best 44 percent in 2017-18 to a league-average 35 percent in 2018-19. Thompson has a long track record of accurate shooting; he has never made fewer than 40 percent of his 3s in an NBA season, making his confidence in the face of an extended slump understandable and an uptick inevitable.
Unfortunately, Thompson's response has been following the old coaching maxim to take a step inside the line. His 7.2 2-point attempts per game outside the paint (up from 5.5 in 2017-18) rank him second in the NBA behind long-2 specialist DeMar DeRozan, according to NBA Advanced Stats. And while Thompson is an uncommonly good shooter on those attempts (46 percent, 12th among players with at least 100 such shots), they still provide less value on average than even his subpar 3-point shooting to date, which has yielded an effective field goal percentage of 52 percent when we account for the extra point. So Thompson shouldn't be afraid to let fly from 3.
2. Eric Gordon
Houston Rockets
Shooting guard
Stop me if you've heard this before: Gordon is a high-volume 3-point shooter whose percentage has slipped early in the season. While the former 3-Point Shootout champ hasn't always been as accurate as Thompson -- his 36 percent high-volume shooting last season was around league average -- this season's 30 percent on 3s is nonetheless out of character for Gordon, a career 37 percent shooter.
Gordon has also been less accurate inside the arc after making 54 percent of his limited 2-point attempts in 2017-18. Gordon's strong finishing has carried over from last season (he's making 66 percent of his shots inside 3 feet, per Basketball-Reference.com), but he's shooting just 26 percent between 3 and 10 feet, a spot from which he has hit 35 percent in his career.
Utah Jazz
Shooting guard
Instead of building on a strong first season that saw him finish runner-up for Rookie of the Year and lead the Jazz to a first-round series win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, Mitchell has gone backward in Year 2. His efficiency, an issue early last season, has reached troublesome levels again. Mitchell's .502 true shooting percentage ranks him ahead of only Russell Westbrook among the 15 rotation players using at least 30 percent of their team's plays.
To some extent, Mitchell probably overachieved as a rookie, proving a more dominant scorer against NBA defenders than he was in college at Louisville. Still, he's likely to improve on 30 percent 3-point shooting thus far, having shot 34 percent beyond the arc as a rookie.
The more interesting question is whether Mitchell can get better shots. In 2017-18, 66 percent of Mitchell's attempts were either inside 3 feet or 3s, according to Basketball-Reference.com. That has dropped to 56 percent so far in 2018-19.
Golden State Warriors
Power forward
Green has never been anywhere near the kind of 3-point marksman his teammate Thompson is, hitting barely 30 percent of his attempts the past two seasons. That's still substantially better than the 25 percent shooting we've seen from Green so far in 2018-19.
It's possible the explanation is physical after Green missed an extended period because of a toe sprain; he has also battled shoulder injuries. Green doesn't always get the lift necessary to put proper arc on his already-flat 3-point shots. It's also possible Green is feeling the pressure of teams daring him to shoot while keeping his defender tethered to the paint, a strategy increasingly being employed by opponents.
Whatever the reason (or combination of reasons), 3-point shooting is random enough that Green's 61 attempts after Saturday's game don't constitute a large enough sample to draw any conclusions. And if Green can shoot better, the ripple effects of being a more dangerous threat should help bring down a 28 percent turnover rate that is the highest in the league by a wide margin among players who have seen at least 200 minutes of action.
5. Chris Paul
Houston Rockets
Point guard
Rumors of Paul's demise as a top-tier point guard are probably exaggerated. Yes, decline is to be expected for a 33-year-old point guard, but the same was true in past seasons as well, and Paul remained a key part of some of the league's best offenses.
Intriguingly, Second Spectrum tracking data shows Paul's shot quality hasn't changed whatsoever. His quantified shot quality (or qSQ, defined as the effective field-goal percentage we'd expect from an average shooter based on the distance and type of shots and location of nearby defenders) is nearly identical to 2017-18, when Paul shot 53 percent on 2s and 38 percent on 3s as compared to 47 and 35, respectively, this season. Paul's qSQ was 48.3 percent last year and is 48.4 percent in 2018-19.
Shooting accuracy doesn't typically wane much with age, so if Paul is getting similar shots, more of them are likely to go in. The wild card here is health; hamstring injuries like the one currently keeping Paul on the sideline could prevent his performance from regressing to the mean.
6. Tyreke Evans
Indiana Pacers
Shooting guard
Surprisingly, Indiana's strong start to 2018-19 hasn't included much help from the team's marquee offseason addition. Coming off a season with the Memphis Grizzlies in which he was one of the league's better point guards when healthy, Evans has seen his 3-point percentage drop from 40 percent to 36 percent and his 2-point shooting tumble even further from 48 percent to a career-low 39 percent.
Evans' 51.0 percent qSQ is his best in the six seasons tracked by Second Spectrum, so his difficulty converting is either health-related (he recently underwent a platelet-rich plasma injection in his right knee, something he also did ahead of the 2017-18 season) or simply randomness.