Shooting has a way of presenting itself in the strangest ways. No matter how many indicators we identify and traits we look for, it comes out of left field all the same.
Picture you are ten years in the past. 2013 Blake Griffin is dominating on the pick-and-roll, jumping over cars and defenders (sorry not sorry Kendrick Perkins), and dominating in the paint. Imagine you’re given a glimpse into the future, and you see this:
Since AI deep-fakes are not a thing yet, you’d just assume this is some sort of black magic or bath salts-induced hallucination. But yes, Blake Griffin is a perimeter guy now. How things change.
Now, I could prattle on about mystery shooting development and leave you thinking “hey, anything is possible!”, but my brain cannot work that way. We need to at least narrow things down, via film and stats, to develop realistic shooting development comparisons for Jonathan Kuminga. So, let’s get into it.
Criteria
For this exercise, I picked out players with comparable frames, shot diets, and development arcs. They’re not perfect fits, but it’s the closest you can get to Kuminga’s profile. We will use Brandon Ingram, Jerami Grant, and Tobias Harris as examples here.
All of these guys have broken out into high-volume deep shooting near or above 40% at some point in their careers. I want to explore how each of these individuals got to an elite level of shooting, and how these factors could foretell a future for Jonathan Kuminga.
Tobias Harris
A one-and-done combo big (in the NCAA at least) coming out of Tennessee, Harris’ prospect profile didn’t scream “future elite shooter”. 36.6% from the midrange, 30% from deep, and 75% from the line is about as middling as it gets. Yet a 6’8″ frame and a baseline touch gives some hope, and though it took a while, Tobi arrived. Look at his shooting development in the first 4 years in the NBA:
Getting to 36.4% on solid volume isn’t the level of breakout you will see with some of these other players, but considering this was the prelude to elite shooting 2-3 seasons later, I’ll count it for our purposes.
A few things to consider: all of the shooting percentages are very steady, from both midrange spots and the line, but the three-pointers fluctuated between bad and below-average. As he scaled up in his role, he began adding far more three-point volume, going from a 14% three-point frequency to 25% by year 4. This increased confidence in his shot began to show; he didn’t take an unassisted three until getting out of Milwaukee and began showing his off-the-dribble game.
The 2013-14 season for Orlando was crucial for his development. Despite hitting only 25.4% of his threes, he took almost 10% of them off the dribble. Midrange and free-throw indicators remained stable, and this built into his year 4 breakout. The increased confidence led to volume, volume lead to production, and just like that Tobias Harris was a good NBA three-point shooter.
His journey was built on stability and slow-burn scaling. He didn’t abandon the productive parts of his game, instead choosing to slowly expand his range and follow the process, not the results. These days he’s incredibly well-rounded, using his shot gravity to do work in the midrange and having some of the best rim frequency/finishing seasons of his career.
The length of his journey, however, was far different than the others we will look at.
Jerami Grant
Talk about a breakout nobody saw coming.
A below-average free throw shooter at Syracuse with career 6/20 marks from deep and 33.3% in the midrange, there were very few reasons to think Jerami Grant would turn into a borderline elite shooter at the NBA level. Yet, we are here.
Grant went from a non-shooting off-ball 4 to a true on-ball scoring machine on the perimeter and in the midrange, completely transforming his offensive profile with the addition of these new perimeter skills. He jumped from a middling usage scorer to a 90th percentile-plus usage wing, taking tons more threes and midrange shots at far lower assisted rates. The development hasn’t stopped: Grant now boasts one of the quicker catch-and-release jumpers you’ll find in the league.
Compare that jumper to what you see in the video below, and you’ll see the technical strides he has made:
He tightened his base (which is more conducive to movement looks) and killed the dip in his release while becoming more efficient from deep, a difficult feat by itself. This allows Grant to add a wider array of shots to his diet with the same repeated mechanics: if your off-the-dribble or off-screen mechanics are the same as your standstill shots, it builds more consistency in the shot. Keep that on-the-fly shot tweaking in mind when we get to Jonathan Kuminga.
Grant is an interesting contrast to Tobias Harris in terms of building offensive layers. While Harris slowly expanded his game, adding to a strong rim-finishing game with midrange and later threes, Grant burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man. The shot arrived, and the rest fell into place as a result: foul drawing (89th percentile last year), unassisted rim looks, and tons of long midrange creation off the dribble. Now you have a 20+ PPG scorer for the last 3 seasons on 45/37/83 shooting splits.
Exploring scoring growth via shooting is an interesting case, and I like to look at different ways it shows itself. When projecting a player like Kuminga, that potential growth could be explosive (like Jerami) or slow-burn (like Tobias). It’s good to see how those indicators develop, and what could be construed as indicators for those growth patterns.
Now, let’s look at a more explicable example of shooting development: massive volume increase.
Brandon Ingram
Now, there are certainly some reasons that can explain this massive leap in shooting production. One is named Fred Vinson, the New Orleans shooting coach who has worked wonders, including a total overhaul of Lonzo Ball’s shooting (which also happened the same year as Ingram’s breakout). At the time Ingram was on the team, the Lakers were the only NBA team to not employ a shooting coach. Yes, the mighty Lakers forgot to work on the “shooting” aspect of the game up through 2019. What a shame.
Ironically, the team only hired a shooting coach the summer after trading Ingram and Ball to the Pelicans, and the hiree in question was one of Vinson’s underlings. Too little too late.
You can see the lack of a shooting development plan in Ingram’s shot profile. Despite the rough numbers from the line and from deep, he was always a player with touch and shooting indicators and the frame to work wonders with. Yet his three-point attempts actually decreased in his first 3 seasons, despite the Lakers not being very serious teams on the court. His shot development was completely adrift, aimless, just waiting for something to break.
And since Ingram was shipped to New Orleans, he transformed into one of the best perimeter shotmakers in the league.
Encouraged to shoot from deep instead of discouraged, Ingram quadrupled his three-point attempts from his last season in LA to his first in New Orleans. That is a ton of high-level reps that developed confidence and consistency, and he responded with his best overall shooting season. The Bingy striped 43% of his long twos, 39% of his threes, and jumped his free throw percentage from the high 60s to mid 80s.
The shot development from deep opened up the best part of his game in the midrange. In New Orleans, Ingram has been the premiere midrange shot taker of the league not named DeMar DeRozan: 61% of his total shot attempts last season came from these spots. Considering he also has crazy unassisted shot percentages, these are of the highest difficulty, and he manages to make them at a strong clip. Adding that three-pointer to his arsenal, albeit at low volume, has served to accentuate the best part of his scoring game.
Many other factors have gone into his overall scoring breakout, including a higher volume of on-ball reps and lack of competition for touches. Adding the three-point shot helped turn Ingram from a lanky potential-laden wing to a primary scoring option and perennial All-Star caliber player, and unlock the true strengths of his game. In terms of realistic needs for a guy like Jonathan Kuminga, this is the ideal outcome: adding enough of a strong perimeter shot to accentuate the true strengths of his offensive game.
Man of the Hour: Jonathan Kuminga
We’ve seen a range of shooting development outcomes now, and it’s time to do some projecting.
You’ll notice something in the shot diet right off the bat: lots more threes than midrange attempts. But when you look at the film on his midrange attempts, you see a lot of touch, handle, and confidence that translates to success. When he gets going to his right at the elbows, he has a really soft touch and great apex on his jumper from all angles:
It’s not a shot he is encouraged to take often, but one he could certainly add more to his diet if space is opened up by his threes down the road.
Not only have we seen an improvement from below-average to above-average shotmaking from deep, but Kuminga has drastically improved his form. This is one of the factors that led to Jerami Grant’s breakout: locking the elbow and speeding up the release without sacrificing efficiency. Kuminga has sped up his release compared to last year, but his percentages did not suffer. That’s a great sign of his preternatural touch, something largely necessary to long-term shooting development from multiple levels.
Just listen to Klay Thompson discuss it, a guy who knows a thing or two about shooting form:
What I have also enjoyed over his first two seasons is the commitment to work on his form and add new tweaks when necessary, something that was also of great benefit to Jerami Grant. He’s working on his feedback constantly, improving the speed, efficiency, and repetition of his form. Look at the second clip here and note the angle of his shooting elbow:
Now here is his free throw motion last year. Check out how tight that shooting elbow is to his body, but with the same speed and eye tracking:
If Kuminga is comfortable speeding up the work on his jumper like this, and seeing an uptick in his shooting results through that process, then we should be bullish on his future shooting ability.
He’s capable of sustaining strong shooting stretches already. Over the second half of the season, Joku hit 41% of his 2.5 attempts per game, and it correlated with strong midrange looks. This really helped to round out his offensive game, again much like Jerami Grant: his foul-drawing and 2-point % both went up over that stretch, as teams had to respect the shot and opened up his lightning-fast closeout attacks.
Concluding Thoughts
It becomes simple math once Kuminga has established himself as a strong “time and room” shooter. If you leave him wide open and he continues to make it, it’s time to play him closer. And the vast majority of defenders cannot keep him in front physically. As his handle-footwork combo continues to develop alongside his superior athleticism, this will play off his perimeter game, and you will find yourself looking at a well-rounded scoring wing sooner than later.
How he ultimately shapes his game in the future will be interesting if the shooting is real. Perhaps it simply serves as a way to keep the defense honest as he tries to relentlessly drive the paint. Maybe the midrange game comes around, and he cultivates a Harris/Grant-esque scoring profile. Heck, he could just be a great perimeter AND inside-the-arc talent like Ingram, only with the frame of a competition-winning bodybuilder instead of LeBron’s skeleton (no offense, Bingy). Now that’s a scary thought.
I’ll be closely watching Kuminga’s shooting development over the coming season, and we will begin to get a better idea of his future scoring profile based on the data gathered from this season. Maybe he will carve his own path in the wing-shooting development world. We can only sit back and watch.
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