Sure you can be involved if you're going to talk to me instead of berate me.
I consider mid range 10-23 feet (to keep it simple for hoopdata stats, I don't really know if I would call a shot taken a step inside the 3pt line mid-range but eh).
The thing I have to point out before this goes any farther is that you're asking if they are good. I feel like the goalposts have been moved a little bit since this started off by me arguing against Lebron being one of the best shooters in the league, not whether he is or isn't a good shooter. He obviously is a good shooter and he has shown a lot of improvement, but I just find it silly to call him one of the best when there are players who get paid for their ability to shoot and do nothing else well.
yea. Maybe it was a bit silly to call him one of the best but I like this argument soooooo
I did a sort on Hoop data and out of all player sin the league, that hav e played 40+ games and play 20+ minutes a game.
Between 16 and 23 feet.
The top 20 players are(in order)
Out of that list I'm not sure if Aaron Brooks or Shaun Livingston should count as they only attempts one shot from that distance per game
If we include them then Lebron is apart of the group of guys that are the 7th best in the league at hitting that shot(Terry,LBJ,West,Bass all hit it at 46% with Bron and West having the highest # of attempts)
In that sort I did there are players above and below Bron that I guess you only want for their shooting skills. Like Korver(5th best) or Reddick(8th best). Korver only hits it one percentage point higher than Lebron despite attempting half the shots lbj does.
I think we can conclude that LeBron is apart of the elite players that can hit the 16-23 shot.
With the 10-15 shot. I tried to sort it on Hoopdata but there are so many guys that attempt that shot 0.0-0.4 per game and the site gives them a super high FG% so it was harder to discern but using this year's stats, even though he only attempted 1 per game,it's clear that LeBron was mediocre at that distance. though he usually hits it at an above average percentage. Not sure if this matters but, the 10-15 feet shot is attempted pretty low league wide and I'm not sure if it should be included in the midrange area. It seems to me the only type of shot attempted at that range are long hook shots by big guys or floaters by guards. Not too many guys really "shoot" from this area.
Regarding threes. Hoopdata only has the effective field goal stats and LeBron is apart of the group of players that hit threes the 8th best in the league and that list is full of shooting role players.
So if LeBron is 7th best at 16-23 feet and 8th(maybe 9th) best at hitting threes, I think he's a top shooter.
and like Hasphant's said, in all of these distances, Lebron is is far below league average in %As if you want to take that into consideration
he has been playing for 3 teams in almost a year, feel kinda bad.
