Rose starting to expand his shooting range

On Both Teams Played Hard, Noam Schiller has written an absolutely massive deconstruction of Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose’s game. There’s a lot of good stuff in there about Rose’s floor game, passing, and defense, but one of the main points the article makes is that Rose takes way too many long two-point jumpers, which hurts his scoring efficiency.

I tend to agree with this. Rose takes seven long twos a game, and makes 43% of them. A 43% shooting percentage on long twos is equivalent to shooting 29% from beyond the arc. If Dwyane Wade was taking seven threes a game, people would have a problem with it. It’s tough to spot which players are taking too many long twos because they look just like layup attempts in the box score, but they can really kill a player’s shooting efficiency.

The good news for Bulls fans is that Rose is starting to find his three-point range, and he seems to be committed to trying to add the three-ball to his game. K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune has the story:

Bulls guard Derrick Rose has taken 13 3-point attempts in the last two games, after previously attempting just 20 all season.

“I’m going to keep taking it,” Rose said Monday after the Bulls’ 98-88 victory over the Houston Rockets.. “My other ones were flat, but I hit the most important ones.”

Indeed, Rose expressed major relief when his sixth attempt against the Rockets found the bottom of the net after he had missed his first five. He finished 2-for-7 from beyond the arc after sinking a career-best four against the 76ers last Saturday.

“You’re going to see that (reaction) a lot,” Rose said, jokingly. “That’s not going to be the last time.”

For Josh Smith, cutting the three-point shot from his game was a great idea, because Smith is a terrible outside shooter -- for all the emphasis on his mid-range game, Smith is currently making 28% of his shots from 16-23 feet. Unlike Smith, Rose can’t be an effective player without taking some shots from the perimeter. If he insists on taking long jumpers, it’s much better that they come from beyond the arc than from one or two steps inside of it. It will look ugly when a player as quick as rose goes 1-7 from three-point range in a game, but the reality is that he’s much better off taking those threes than the shots he’s settled for thus far.