Lots of Wesley's shots are uncontested dunks in transition, though. That should account for a large portion of the successful shots. In halfcourt it's a different story.
PS: I replied before reding your last sentence![]()
There are 329 players who have played at least 400 total minutes on the season; Wesley has played 415.
Wesley shoots 46.2% of his shots at the rim (0-3 feet), which ranks #39 on that list. He is second highest player on this list that isn't a big.
Wesley makes 68.8% of his shots at the rim, which ranks #163 on that list. Taking out players listed as PF or C, he ranks #82 out of 209 players.
This is a simplistic take based only on the stats, but the numbers suggest that he is very good at getting to the rim (the eye test bears that out) and is above average for his position at finishing there. Fast break stats skew this a lot, though, and I don't have a way of breaking those out.
Lots of Wesley's shots are uncontested dunks in transition, though. That should account for a large portion of the successful shots. In halfcourt it's a different story.
PS: I replied before reding your last sentence![]()
Wesley is shooting 50/81 on twos this year. 11 of those makes are dunks, though I know of at least two that were in the halfcourt from what I remember of games I have watched.
He is 33/48 at the rim on the season. I will assume for now that 9 of his 11 dunks have been in transition; taking those out makes his shooting numbers 41/72 on twos overall and 24/39 at the rim (61.5%).
Of course this assumes that all of his non-dunk makes were not in transition, which is certainly not true. However, I don't know how to find transition versus non-transition stats.
Also keep in mind that all the player stats include transition shots. Unless Wesley is getting a very disproportionate number of his attempts at the rim in transition compared to other players (quite possible but again I don't know where to find these stats), the stats as shown are a valid comparison.
The eye test tells me that he is still a below average finisher, especially because the stats don't show shots that he probably should have taken and didn't, but he's still far better than he was last season.
That's where he's always going to shine, though. Transition baskets, breakaways off steals, using his athleticism and length to hound people in the backcourt - I don't see why anyone would take the position of "well he gets all of his dunks in the fast break!" thinking it's a bad thing. So what? That's great! At least, that's what I'd say.
By minimizing his at the rim attempts in the half court and prioritizing fast breaks, I have to imagine that helps his averages, which is not a bad thing necessarily, as he was really horrible at
finishing at the rim in the half court, and he's really good at hounding ball handler and getting breakaways, shots almost no one else on the team was getting.
Last edited by The Truth #6; 02-13-2024 at 07:45 PM.
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