Have Shooting Specialists Become Overvalued In The NBA?

In a recent look at the Miami Heat and their outside shooting problems, the difficulties faced by their out-and-out jump shot specialist Duncan Robinson were a key part of the narrative. Robinson has gone from every-game starter to being on the fringes of the Heat’s rotation within three years, all because his three-point efficiency has gone from 44% to 34%. Shooting is the one above-average NBA skill that he has, so it needs to always be on point, and it has not been.

Unfortunately, in the interim, he went from cheap young bargain to highly expensive veteran. After the conclusion of his third season, one in which his production tapered off slightly (31 minutes, 13.1 points and not much else per game on 40.6% three-point shooting), the Heat re-signed to Robinson to a five year, $90 million contract with $80 million guaranteed. That is premium role player money.

A premium role player, though, he is not. With averages so far this season of 7.0 points and 2.1 rebounds in 18.2 minutes per game on 37.2% shooting, Robinson’s steady decline has continued over the one and a half seasons so that he is now not always in the rotation at all. In fact, it has gotten to the point that he is currently one of the worst players in the NBA.

Robinson always was a limited player, but the shooting was the redeeming feature. The sweet shooting stroke, plus the gravitational effect that the threat of it would have on a defence, made for an offensive weapon to be overlooked with peril. But that only worked when he was one of the best shooters in the sport. When he is not that, he is a player who takes no dribbles, who is exploitable defensively by all kinds of match-ups, who is a foul waiting to happen if caught in any kind of space, and who neither wins not creates possessions. He is simply a specialist, and, in the estimation of last year’s Heat at least, seemingly only a regular season specialist at that.

All this is not to deliberately pile onto Robinson, who tries his best. There is nothing wrong with being a specialist, especially when said specialism is the specialism in modernity. The three-point explosion has taken the NBA in a whole new direction over the last ten years, something which Robinson both benefited from and had a small part in bringing about.

Bear in mind that Dennis Scott set the record for most three-pointers in a season back in 1995-96 with 267, a number slightly bettered by Ray Allen’s 269 in 2005-06. For a long time, that was it. In the three-plus decade history of the shot, those were the records, and anything over 200 made threes in a season was hallowed turf. Only in 2012/13 did the Stephen Curry factor begin to reset the bar. And then consider that in 2019/20, even an undrafted sophomore like Duncan Robinson hit 270 of them. It is truly a new game, one in which shooting has been regarded as the new premium.

However, Robinson does serve as an illustration of the dangers of overvaluing that premium. Taken to excess, teams can wind up with a healthy, relatively young shooter on a massive contract that they still do not feel that they can play, no matter how recently they thought so highly of him. And Robinson is not the only example of such.

Five years after drafting him in the second round of the 2011 NBA Draft, the San Antonio Spurs finally brought over forward Davis Bertans, who proved that those extra five years of seasoning were worth it. He did not take long to adapt to the NBA, and especially its three-point line, hitting 39.9% from outside as a rookie. Two further seasons of incremental improvement followed – a mix of catch-and-shoot wing threes and the occasional highlight block out of nowhere – and in his third NBA season, 2018/19, Bertans shot a .632 true shooting percentage in a ruthlessly efficient off-ball role.

Surprisingly, Bertans was salary-dumped by the Spurs that summer onto the Washington Wizards, but it proved no hindrance to him personally. Indeed, quite the opposite; a breakout campaign followed, one in which the Latvian averaged 15.4 points per game, maintaining a fierce .628 true shooting percentage. His game was not an especially well-rounded one, but at 6’10, with an excellent shooting stroke, the speed and nous to get open for good looks, and still with the occasional chase-down block in his game, it was a highly useful one.

Just like Robinson, then, Bertans got paid. Specifically, he received five years and $80 million, with $69 million of it guaranteed. And yet like Robinson, it has all slipped backwards from there. The first season on the new deal saw his numbers across the board slip – including, crucially, the three-point stroke – and then the bottom fell out of the second year. Bertans struggled with injuries, lost his shot, lost his purpose on the court, and was dealt on to the Dallas Mavericks as a purely financial part of the trade for Kristaps Porzingis.

Since that time, Bertans has mostly been out of the rotation. He has played only 170 minutes over 17 games in this campaign thus far, only the twelfth-highest minute total on the team, and his impact can be just as spluttering. Some nights, he will hit a couple of shots, and provide a welcome infusion of something from the bench. Some other nights, he will miss a couple of shots, and fans will wonder what the team is paying for. And most nights, it seems, he just does not play at all.

Therein lies the danger of the shooting specialist. Their impact is tied to their shot, and that shot is tied to many other things. All players are susceptible to injuries, of course, but movement shooters are in particular (and, if a shooter is not a quality movement shooter, then they are not likely a shooting specialist at the NBA level). The quality of their looks is also not something they can much control, given that they are not creating with the handle, and given their negligible impacts elsewhere on the court, the foundation of their value is a fragile one.

For a time, Bertans had the benefit of youth, and the occasional heartening defensive moment, which allowed for both hope and expectation for his future. For a while, the services of Duncan Robinson were filthy cheap and it all came as great profit. But things are fickle in high-level sports – one injury, one slump, one change of circumstances, and suddenly the specialist is the surplus.