Nik Stauskas is finally putting it together
Doubt is both a fickle weed that grows from the anxious recesses of an unwell mind, and the daring poltergeist that clouds our judgment. Within ourselves, doubt can be the difference between confident success and frustrating inconsistency. When it manifests itself in our judgment of others, it can lead to a drastic under-appreciation of what they are capable of.
On the basketball court, doubt is a key ingredient in decision-making. For defenses, it is the foundation upon which the decision to ignore someone in the weakside corner or blitz another guy toward the baseline in the pick-and-roll is made. For offensive players, it is an opponent almost as crippling as the actual defender looking your way in a knees-crouched stance.
Sometimes, exceeding expectations is simply a matter of overcoming one’s own doubt and capitalizing on the inches granted to them by the doubt of the defense. So it’s not necessarily a shock that Nik Stauskas has regained the shooting stroke that made him such an appealing draft target in 2014. What’s shocking is the extent to which he’s overcome the inefficiency of his first two seasons.
Call it doubt or frustration or pure inconsistency. The buzzwords lie everywhere in the NBA’s lingua franca. Nik Stauskas, through the first month of the most hyped Philadelphia 76ers season in recent memory, has put all of it behind him. A lot of his “development” (and it’s silly to call it that) has derived from nailing the shots he’s always nailed.
Through his first two seasons, Stauskas averaged 11.5 points per 36 minutes, shooting 37.8 percent from the field and 32.5 percent on 3-pointers. So far this season, he’s averaging 14.6 points per 36, shooting 51.2 percent and 45.1 percent on 3s.
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As a nominal shooter, an archetype we’ve literally created a position for, a player can create value for his team by subtracting a defender from the middle of the floor and making a creaky or unfocused defense pay when they leave him. Shot-makers gonna make shots.
Largely as a result of an improvement across the Sixers’ roster in passing the ball, players like Joel Embiid and Sergio Rodriguez are consistently there to set things in motion for an open Stauskas look. The “wide-open” (six-plus feet of room) and catch-and-shoot looks are the ones off of which dominant shooters make a long living.
By virtue of his quick, consistent, and forceful release, Stauskas rarely has to fear a hard close-out or long defender. His shot has the signature look of a great shooter’s, one part Allen and one part Curry, with maybe a little of that great Reggie guide hand to top it off. We should have learned our lesson by now, but doubt is a disease. A guy drifts away from the spotlight with early-career tumult, and his circle of stans disbands.
The allure of Nik Stauskas, NBA Player, like most prolific shoot-first scorers, is that he knows what to do when things don’t run so smoothly. He comes from the Stephen Curry School of “pump fake, behind-the-back, shot attempt” shooting approaches:
And while his disgustingly long shooting range provides him the comfort of rarely having to attack a closeout, he has shown a knack for using a slithery slide into the lane when the defense gives way:
We can’t know if that stuff will translate, and he doesn’t need it to in order to provide value for his team. Shooting 45.1 percent on 3-pointers, splashing home all of the looks he ought to, and beating buzzers and triple-teams on the regular is all part of the fun. Not every guy billed as a generational shooter out of college becomes a generational shooter and them some.
Sometimes credit is due in a situation where a talented person overcomes disrespect from his opponent and internal frustration to blow up over the span of a month. Let good things happen.