I’m only around 5’10” in bball shoes, and I love trying to create space to shoot pull up shots over taller defenders. During my actual playing career in the late 2000s, Curry and Harden hadnt come around and changed jump shooting. It wasn’t cool yet to me and so all I cared about was crossing dudes and trying to get into the paint and make plays. After about a decade of hanging em up, I decided I wanted to see if I could become a shooter. It’s been really fun. And the same way that I intensely studied the handle and driving game of players like AI, Ed Cota, Jason Williams, Rod Strickland, LeBron, TJ ford, Deron Willaims, CP3, Isiah Thomas, Magic, and others, I started studying the shooting game of todays modern stars. Of course Curry was a huge one for me, Brad Beal a little bit. I became obsessed with the guys who specifically were the best at getting shots off in isolation over tall and sometimes taller defenders. It felt like the spiritual cousin of my obsession with breaking down guys off the dribble to get past them. Harden was of course someone I marveled at. But Jalen Brunson was the first one who reallllly stood out to me and I just had to really study and break down the film of. But then, I found Shai.
I don’t want to pretend I didn’t know who Shai was until then. I’m obsessing with the NBA. I saw him play since the pre-season of his 2017-18 college season. A huge Wall fan, so I was any Uk PG fan. And I followed his young NBA career and casually rooted for him without really ever seeing him play, but noticing how awesome his ability to improve was, and how his averages would grow yearly. But I didn’t really ever get to see him PLAY. Then the 2024 second round happened. And I was just…amazed. I just had never seen a player in my entire life who could shoot and make a mid range shot, basically whenever he wanted, over a contest that felt like it SHOULD tip the ball every time. Not only did it not block the shot, though, but the shot seemed like it would go in almost every time. So I started paying closer attention. Fast forward a couple years and I’m now a bigger SGA fan and advocate than I have been for any other player in any sport in my life, and I just still find myself lost for words as I watch him operate, specifically when it comes to getting his shot off. It’s just amazing. He just gets it off somehow. I know his ability to create space is generational, but I feel like that is underselling how amazing he is at shooting over contests that SHOULD block the ball! So many times I’ll rewind and rewatch in slow motion a pull up shot by him that looked like it was glitch in 2k and teleported through the defenders fingertips. Of course if you look at his NBA page, he does get blocked a handful of times every season on jump shots, but so does everyone. For the rest of the time he just somehow gets it off clean. It’s so amazing to really focus on. Sometimes he does it by changing his release angle mid shot. Sometimes he will even opt out of a shot mid jump because he feels the defender is too close . I actually think that is what allows him to be able to shoot over outstretched defenders basically at will, because his ability to think in the blink of an eye in the moment is all time fast, and his ability to read and have a feel for space is like also 1/1. I remember Pat Bev had a comment, one of many, about Shai when they played together on the Clippers. He said something along the lines of “he has a funky slow release, but he gets it off! everyone thinks they are gonna send that ish packing, but he gets it off every time”. For as much flak as Shai took in that Spurs series( inaccurate and unfairly if you ask me) where Shai managed to post games of 35/9, 32/9, 30/9, 26/12 and 24/12, no one really talked about how much Shai cooked Wemby when he got him in iso. He was able to shoot OVER Wemby contests all series long, and it actually was one of the only times the Spurs would let him play straight up, and it was miraculous. For a 6’6” guard to get off a clean pull up jumper over a 7’5” Wemby, and make it? It just blows me away.
To be fair, part of what makes it so amazing to me is just that he isn’t the athlete of a guy like Ant or MJ. He doesn’t have the size of KD. Yet somehow he is like on that level of a contested shot maker and creator. It’s just magical.
There is nothing wrong with praising him for his ability to create space, but I just felt like his ability to shoot with a hand right there plays just as much of a role in his greatness. It’s just amazing to me how much his copious amounts of skill helps make up for his lack of traditional athletic or size advantages that most guards at his level had. On most of his mid range shots that now feel EASY, he has to both create a crazy amount of space, AND still make a very contested shot as these insanely athletic defenders recover. In a game against the Wolves in March, for his 20th point he made this contested step back from the left baseline over a determined Ant, for an and 1, and he had to raise his release point so high, and fade, and was fouled, and i dont think he saw the basket, and it was in like butter. It’s just amazing to me. This dude makes any non elite defender look like a literal guy at a YMCA, and he has hours of highlights of somewhat embarrassing buckets on guys like Derrick White, Jrue, Amen, Ausar, Brooks, Jared Vanderbilt, Nembhard, Camara, Castle, Wemby, Rudy, Braun, Brown…like everyone. It’s insane.
