Opening Shots
Why Does Draymond Go First?
The Golden State Warriors employ the best shooter of all time, yet here is how they decide to start most of their games:
Through his first 16 games of the season, Draymond Green has taken the Warriors first shot attempt 8 times, a lot of them threes like the clunker above. Of course, Draymond isn’t a high volume shooter overall; he’s only taken 70 threes at the time of writing,1 but by my count, 10 of them have come in the first minute of the game. That’s 14% of his attempts coming in 2% of game time. That’s over 60% of games featuring a Draymond three in the first minute.
It’s not a good shot. Draymond, who is a 32% three-point shooter for his career, has made three of those 10 first-minute threes, which amounts to 0.9 points per shot attempt; the league average is 1.2. Again, this team has the undisputed greatest shooter of all time in Stephen Curry. He’s taken just two opening-minute threes.
This may seem like a trivial point, but it does give insight into coaching philosophies and player mindsets. After all, it’s the possession coaches and pre-game preparation have the most impact on, given they’ve had 24+ hours to get ready for the next play, this play. So why is Steve Kerr diagramming these actions2 for a 30% three-point shooter instead of the guy who can do this? There are a few tactical pieces at play:
It lets Draymond find his shooting rhythm and establish his presence early. Kerr and everyone else knows that Steph comes out of the tunnel ready to drain shots from anywhere. Draymond may need to see one go in during the game to feel more comfortable. There appears to be some backing to this theory, as the data show a decent correlation between Draymond making that opening-minute three, and his performance in the game overall.3
Kerr hopes to catch the other team, who’s main game planning revolves around Curry and the Robin to his Batman, Jimmy Butler, off guard. A lot of Draymond’s opening shots have been wide open. In the play above, you can clearly see the reason Draymond gets the clean look is Steph’s ability to draw the defense into his orbit. The Lakers double Steph after the screen by Jonathan Kuminga, which Steph reads quickly and responds to by getting the ball to Kuminga. Draymond’s man then has to drop down to stop a Kuminga drive and flush, leaving Draymond wide open.
If Draymond’s first shot or two go in, it helps space the floor for the rest of the game. While he’s not the best shooter of all time, he can get hot: case in point, he made five threes in a game against the Nuggets earlier this year. So if an opponent sees Draymond drain a few, they will adjust and respect him with harder closeouts. That leaves the rest of the floor more clear for Steph and his other Warriors teammates.
Golden State isn’t the only team employing an opening strategy that eschews their best player, a former-MVP, for an average shot. The most frequent opening attempter for the Oklahoma City Thunder? Chet Holmgren. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has taken nearly 400 field goals this season, second in the entire NBA, but only one of those came in an opening minute of a Thunder game. Chet has taken five, Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins three each, and Lu Dort and Isaiah Hartenstein two each. Head Coach Mark Daigneault knows Shai will get to his 30-piece anyway, so he uses the opening action to get the rest of the guys involved.
Across the league, Draymond Green takes the second highest percentage of his team’s opening attempts, trailing only Jaylen Brown in Boston. That concentration is more to be expected. While the Celtics still have flamethrowers in Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, and Sam Hauser on their roster, with Jayson Tatum out everyone knew this was going to be Brown’s team. Sure enough, he’s taking nearly four more shots per game than he did last season, and 0.5 more in the opening minute.
As you can see in the chart above, Houston’s first shot takers are even more concentrated than either the Warriors or the Celtics. That checks out, given the lack of shooting down their roster; as Zach Lowe likes to (jokingly?) point out, they may be the first real contender in NBA history whose primary offensive strategy is missing shots and grabbing offensive rebounds. Kevin Durant is the leading opening shot taker in Houston, followed closely by Alperen Şengün. Combined they take about 70% of the Rocket’s first attempts.
On the flip side, the Cavaliers are one of the most balanced distributors of opening attempts. That also makes sense with Cleveland’s roster - I’d be happy with any of Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Lonzo Ball, Sam Merrill, or Deandre Hunter (who has actually taken the most thus far) taking the first shot.
The Spurs distribution is a bit stranger; in their first 16 games they’ve seen seven different players fire the opening salvo. You might think they’d just give the ball to their 7’346?” Center every time down the court, but like the Warriors with Steph and the Thunder with Shai, opposing defenses spend most of their game-planning time getting ready for Victor Wembanyama, so they’ve changed it up by shifting to other starting strategies and players.
There are some other surprising first shooters around the league:
Ryan Rollins, not Giannis Antetokounmpo, in Milwaukee.
Two rookies: Kon Knueppel in Charlotte and Cooper Flagg4 in Dallas.
Jock Landale in Memphis, perhaps another indicator of Ja Morant’s disengagement.
Most of the first shooters are who you might expect though. In addition to Jaylen Brown and Kevin Durant, we have Anthony Edwards in Minnesota, Karl Anthony Towns (the self proclaimed best shooting big man of all time) in New York, Tyrese Maxey in Philadelphia, Lauri Markkanen in Utah, Michael Porter Jr. in Brooklyn, and Luka Dončić in LA.
To his credit, Draymond has made half of his attempts when he’s the first Warrior to fire away, just one fewer than Jaylen Brown and significantly better than guys like Andrew Nembhard, Anthony Edwards, and Harrison Barnes, who hasn’t made an opening shot yet despite taking the most for the Spurs. For what it’s worth, Deandre Hunter is the only player still perfect (four for four) when he takes the first shot.
Hope this gives you another thing to watch for the rest of the season.5 I enjoyed getting back into some on court analysis after a few weeks of jersey deep dives, rewatching old games, and charting happiness. If you enjoyed it, I’d really love if you’d share it with a friend and subscribe below! See you next week.
Games through November 24th.
I’m assuming it’s not Draymond diagramming the actions, which maybe isn’t a fair assumption.
As measured by Basketball Reference’s Game Score.
Partly because he’s one of the few healthy Mavericks.
And you only have to watch a minute of the game to notice it!
silly comparing Draymond's taking a WIDE OPEN 3 early in the game to Steph's 'lack' of 3s early.
First off Green will be WIDE OPEN, it also establishes that he's willing to take the open shot so that the defense won't cheat off his as much going forward, opening up passing lanes.
Too many analysts staring at numbers wo watching how the game flows and develops.