When analyzing Daye’s game, one of the first things to stand out has to be his jump shot. With his length and elevation, Daye has an extremely high release point on his shot, and it doesn’t hurt that he completely maximizes that release point with the upward trajectory of his shooting motion. Strong, complimentary adjectives get thrown out a lot when assessing prospects, but in this case, there are only a handful of three-point shooters in the NBA today that have a higher release point on their shot than Daye (
Dirk Nowitzki, Rasheed Wallace, Mehmet Okur, Andrea Bargnani, James Jones), and we’re talking about a player that projects primarily as a small forward. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also been very effective from deep in the early going, hitting 43% of his shots on 30 attempts. When he gets his feet set and has time to be deliberate with his motion, Daye’s shot looks as smooth as it gets. That shooting ability has also translated to the free-throw line, where he’s shooting a very strong 91% in the early going, on a noteworthy 67 attempts.
Daye’s shooting is not without flaws, but his effectiveness in the early going has been pretty strong and his overall potential in this area is immense. To reach that potential, one thing Daye will need to work on is better consistency with his release, specifically when pulling up or being rushed by a contesting defender. In these situations, he often doesn’t hold his follow through and doesn’t always have a picture perfect release, and his accuracy suffers because of it. It should be noted, though, that with his upward motion and high release, Daye doesn’t need much space to get off his shot, and shows some nice flashes of putting up shots when closely guarded, having good, but very inconsistent success with it.
Bookmarks