Wesley Matthews: dark horse of the three-point contest
With Portland Trail Blazers guard Wesley Matthews set to compete in the NBA’s three-point shooting contest later tonight, let’s take a look at some of the more specific aspects of his shooting statistics.
Matthews sits atop the league in a three-way tie with Kyle Korver and Stephen Curry for the most three-pointers made this season. With 161 made threes so far, Matthews has eclipsed his total going into the break last season by 24. On the season, he’s shooting nearly 1.5 more threes per game than at any other time in his career and he’s converting those attempts a respectable 39.8 percent of the time.
Among this year’s three-point shootout contestants, Matthews is one of the streakier shooters. A lot has been said about the existence or non-inexistence of the “zone,” that feeling that great shooters claim to get when every mechanical and mental aspect of shooting a basketball becomes so pure as to make missing seem impossible. Watch the Trail Blazers play enough games, and you’ll likely see Matthews find that zone. Three-point shooting for this team seems to be fairly infectious, and Matthews is the catalyst of the Blazers’ hot shooting more often than not.
In the team’s 53 games played this season, Matthews has hit three or more consecutive threes in a single game on 14 different occasions. Among the three-point contestants, only Klay Thompson has done that more often than Matthews. The ability to “get hot,” to go on runs of consecutive makes provides an obvious advantage in a three-point contest format, particularly for the Blazers guard.
Matthews currently leads the league in three-pointers attempted, having put up 405 attempts this season. Nearly 60 percent of Matthews’ total shot attempts come from behind the line.
via Peter Beshai
Matthews’ shot chart suggests that he struggles from the right corner. But, for the most part the Blazer’s offense simply doesn’t put guards in the corners, so the opportunities to put up open shots from those corners are limited. Matthews is the only player in the three-point contest whose above-the-break shooting percentage is greater than from either corner—excluding Marco Belinelli who has only attempted 14 left-corner threes all season.
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Vantage Sports recently broke down the three-point contestants using a variety of metrics, the most interesting of which was dribble factor. Dribble factor measures the effect of dribbling on a player’s field goal percentage. Surprising to most, but perhaps less surprising to Trail Blazers’ fans, Matthews’ dribble factor was the highest among this year’s loaded field.
Over his time in Portland, Matthews has developed an incredibly effective step-back three-point shot he uses quite frequently to create open opportunities within the Blazers’ offense. Off one-dribble, Matthews shoots 50 percent from behind the line—11.2 percent better than his overall three-point percentage. He uses the dribble to create space as good as any shooter in the league. For comparison, Curry’s dribble-shooting stats show only a marginal improvement when he takes a single dribble. Curry is perhaps the most notable off-the-dribble three-point shooter in the game, but Matthews’ has been extremely effective using the dribble this season.
Matthews is a really good in-game three-point shooter that likes to use his dribble to create open shots. Unfortunately, the three-point contest is a standstill situation. Over the season, Matthews has trended towards the streaky end of the shooting spectrum and his success in this Saturday’s contest likely will hinge on his ability to get hot from the right spots, at the right time. As one of the league’s best at stringing together consecutive makes from beyond the arc, Matthews will look to set the mark to beat as the first shooter of the night.