FanPost

Was Klay’s Olympic Shooting Good, Poor, or Terrible?

Dan Powers-USA TODAY Sports

In various Golden State Of Mind (GSoM) comment threads over the last few days of the 2016 Olympics, opinions have been stated regarding Klay Thompson’s performance. While a few remarks were made regarding his, at times, questionable defense, the heart of the discussion has regarded his shooting. To sort it out I constructed the simple table below. It shows his shooting and points scored for each game the USA Men’s Team played.

What it shows is stark. Klay had two good games, one that with generosity be labelled mediocre, and five that were quite poor. Of these five, dare one say, terrible or with wordplay offensive or show his feet of Klay? One of his good games was a critical one, the semi-finals against Spain where he scored 22 points and shot 50% from both two and three as well as managing to have two rare shots at the free throw line. The other good game where he scored 30 points (7-13 from three) was a meaningless one from the viewpoint of the Olympic tournament. The USA team would have the same seeding for the knockout rounds whether they won or lost.

Game

Minutes

2PM

2PA

2P%

3PM

3PA

3P%

FTM

FTA

FT%

PTS

GM: Serbia

21:30

3

5

60

2

6

33

0

0

-

12

SF: Spain

35:11

4

8

50

4

8

50

2

2

100

22

QF: Arg

19:53

2

2

100

0

6

0

0

0

-

4

G5: France

26:17

2

3

67

7

13

54

5

7

71

30

G4: Serbia

9:05

0

3

0

1

3

33

0

0

-

3

G3: Aus

23:13

0

3

0

2

6

33

0

0

-

6

G2: Ven

14:59

0

1

0

0

4

0

0

0

-

0

G1: China

18:59

1

3

33

0

3

0

0

0

-

2

Total

169

12

28

43

16

49

32

7

9

77

79

Overall Klay shot 43% from two and 32% from three – well below his 2015-16 NBA regular season performance. [I have attached an ANNEX that shows he shot threes quite well during the regular season.]

So, what is to be concluded regarding Klay’s performance? It was mostly terrible and overall poor, but possibly it was redeemed by his performance in the semi-finals. While the semi-final game was not as close as the final score would tend to indicate, it was still close enough that the USA needed significant offense from multiple players, and at 22 points, Klay was by far the leading scorer (Durant 14, Irving 13, Jordan 9 and Lowry 9). Klay did take 35 minutes to score his points but was still the highest scorer per minute.

What-if games are hard to play. Would the USA have won if Klay had played nine minutes and scored 3 points as he did in one game? Impossible to say. What can be said with confidence is that for the seven meaningful games including the Semi-Finals and Gold Medal Game, Klay when a total of 10 for 25 from two (40%) and 9 for 36 from three (25%). The five games in which he had 6 or fewer points were another sign of his poor shooting.

What the causes of this performance might be is hard to address from a distance. It might be a small sample size phenomenon. It might be playing in a different scheme, but Klay has done well in the past with the same coach and scheme. Possibly, best plausible excuse is the USA team failed to move the ball well. The poll allows you to vote for your favorite excuse – oops – cause of Klay’s subpar performance.

ANNEX

Given Olympic performance I looked at 3-point percentage (3P%). In part, how one views Klay’s 3-point performance as satisfactory depends on how satisfactory are games with 2 three-pointers made (3PM). For example, "Klay had 65 out of 80 games in which he made 2 or more threes," sounds like Klay is a great 3-point shooter. While, "KIay had 36 games with 2 or fewer threes," sounds like he is not as good a 3-point shooter as many believe.

Here is the complete count of number of teams with Klay making 0 through 10 3PM.

Number of 3-point Shots Made

Number of games

0

5

1

10

2

21

3

9

4

12

5

8

6

6

7

4

8

2

9

1

10

2

Games

80

Klay did have several streaks of 2 games and streaks of 3, 5, and 6 games in which he made 2 or fewer 3-point shots (3PM).

Klay’s 3P% was 20.0% or less in 14 games and 33.3% or less in 27 games compared to 40.0% or more in 44 games and 57.1 or more in 16 games (80 games total). When I looked at groups of ten GSW games, only 2 of 8 groupss of ten had his 3P% under 40%, 38.6% and 32.3%. This is not the only evidence of consistency of 3P%. Klay had no streak longer than two games with 3P% less than 35%, and he had only 7 of these.

Klay took 16 or more shots in 52 or 80 games. Klay scored 18 or more points in 53 games and had only 7 games with less than 11 points. He had 14 games with zero assists, 21 with one assist, 19 with two, 20 with 3 assists, and 9 with four or more.

Altogether, Klay had a quite good and consistent regular season shooting threes.

This FanPost is a submission from a member of the mighty Golden State of Mind community. While we're all here to throw up that W, these words do not necessarily reflect the views of the GSoM Crew. Still, chances are the preceding post is Unstoppable Baby!