Bucks Film Room: Pat Connaughton’s Secret Shot

Pat Connaughton’s evolution since joining the Milwaukee Bucks as a free agent in 2018 has been incredible to watch.

He spent the first three years of his career with the Portland Trail Blazers after being selected with the 41st overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. He constantly improved during that stint and established himself as a high-flying, end-of-the-bench caliber player who will work hard and occasionally knock down a shot. Portland had other priorities that offseason and foolishly decided to let Connaughton walk in free agency.

Milwaukee scooped him up on the open market as an afterthought in 2018, as the two sides agreed to a two-year, $3.4 million deal. The Bucks’ reserve outplayed his contract every year, and signed an extension this summer for his third contract with the team.

After averaging between 5.4 and 6.9 points per game during his first three seasons in Milwaukee, he took a nice step forward last year when he scored a career-high 9.9 points per contest. That increased scoring volume was created thanks to Connaughton taking and making more threes than ever. After never taking more than four threes per game throughout his first six years, he took nearly six per game in 2021-22 and connected on 39.5 percent of them as well.

These days, however, it’s not enough to take (and make) more threes—players need to add some diversity to their shot profile. Most commonly, guys take deeper threes, shots off the bounce or some side-steps behind the arc.

Connaughton’s own creative maneuver is a high-catch, high-release shot that allows him to get the ball out of his hands before his defender can recover to contest.

This was a welcomed addition to Connaughto’s repertoire and helped him push the limits of his three-point volume. The next question is: Was it a positive tool in his belt?

To get a sense of whether this tricep flick was helpful to the Bucks and Connaughton’s three-point percentage, I scoured through all of his 370 regular season and 64 postseason three-point attempts to manually compute his exact percentage.

Before we go any further, we must establish clear rules for what qualifies in this high-catch, high-release shot. They are as follows:

1. The ball must be caught at or above shoulder height.
2. He could dip the ball if it stayed at or above shoulder height.

A couple of additional notes:

• There were a couple of shots where he caught it just below the shoulders and went straight up with it, but those were not counted.
• There was an evident uptake in these shot attempts around Game 35 of the season (end of December).
• 352 of his 370 regular season three-point shots were of the catch-and-shoot variety.
• He took part in a lot of two-man action with Giannis Antetokounmpo where he set a ball screen before flaring to the three-point line (heck, he even set a ball screen for Thanasis Antetokounmpo on at least one occasion!).
• He prefers to step into this threes with his left foot first and then his right.

Overall, I counted 24 shots that met the required criteria, or 5.5 percent of the threes he took last season. Of those 24 shots, he connected on 10 of them, or 41.7 percent. That’s not a huge number by any means, but it’s still noteworthy.

With the uptick in this shot type as the season went on, it will be interesting to see if Connaughton unloads it more often in 2022-23. He has to be careful with it because it removes a lot of the rhythm and mechanics that have turned him into a reliable outside shooter over the past few years. However, it also allows him to get shots off in tighter windows and gives the defense less time to recover.

It will be imperative for players to get creative with their outside shots, as the game continues to evolve toward more threes. We’ve see someone like Brook Lopez shoot from further behind the line, the Steph Curry’s and Damian Lilliard’s extend that range even further, and now guys like Klay Thompson and Connaughton implementing the high-catch, high-release tool to their belt.