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The Cleveland Cavaliers are one of the fittest teams in the NBA, the main North American basketball league. They have won eleven of the last twelve games, also thanks to the exceptional performances of Sam Merrill, who since December has been shooting and scoring three-pointers with a frequency never seen before in the NBA and very high success percentages: even higher than those of Stephen Curry, the point guard of the Golden State Warriors who is considered the best three-point shooter in the history of the competition thanks to a long and exceptional career.
In basketball, shots from outside the area (traced at a maximum distance of 7.24 meters from the basket in the United States and 6.75 in Europe) are worth 3 points, while those from inside the area are worth 2. After 45 games of the season regular season, the Cleveland Cavaliers are surprisingly fourth in the Eastern Conference, one of the two divisions in which the 30 NBA teams are distributed, with distinct rankings (at the end of the regular season, which lasts 82 games, eight teams from each conference qualify for the playoffs ).
Merrill, born in 1996 in the American state of Utah, until recently was little known, at least to most, and had had a less than exciting career. He wasn’t a core player for Cleveland, but that has changed since Darius Garland and Evan Mobley, two of the team’s starters, were injured last month. Since December 18, the Cavaliers have become the No. 1 team in the league in 3-pointers attempted and No. 2 in 3-pointers made, thanks in large part to Merrill’s impact. In the twelve games in which Merrill played for at least 20 minutes (out of the 48 total of an NBA game), Cleveland won eleven times and Merrill shot on average at least ten times from three, a figure much higher than average.
One statistic perhaps explains Merrill’s exceptional period best of all: from December 18th to January 26th he attempted 17.7 three-point shots every one hundred possessions, that is, every one hundred times Cleveland had the ball. No one had ever shot so much in the history of the NBA. The previous record was the 17.5 shots attempted in 2020-2021 by Curry, who is considered the best shooter in history not only because he scored more three-point shots than anyone else (3,585, 658 more than the second, Ray Allen), but also because it is believed that this exceptionality has changed the way of playing basketball in recent years.
Since Curry and the Golden State Warriors began to win by scoring many three-pointers, many other teams and players also began to focus on this aspect of the game, strongly influencing their opponents’ defensive schemes. Many then began to shoot from further away than the three-point shooting line, i.e. from just outside the area, as usually happened before, so much so as to stimulate discussions – completely hypothetical for now – on the possibility of even introducing a three-point shot. 4 points.
In short, Merrill is shooting threes with an unprecedented frequency, yet his shot completion percentage continues to remain very high: 42.8 percent of his attempts from outside the area end up in the basket. Curry is hitting 40.3 percent of his 3-pointers this season.
Obviously the comparison holds up to a certain point: Merrill is going through a good moment but he is still a supporting player, that is, a player capable of helping his team in some circumstances but not the most important of all, as Curry is for the Golden State Warriors. Furthermore, his influence in the league is very far from the one that Steph Curry has had over the entire sport for 15 years.
(Against Utah, last December 20, Merrill scored his record for points in a game: 27)
Merrill began playing in the NBA in the 2020-2021 season, when he was selected by the New Orleans Pelicans as the last pick of the draft, the process through which the NBA selects players from school leagues or from abroad: each team in turn can choose a player, and being the last choice means not being considered particularly attractive. A few days later he was traded from New Orleans to the Milwaukee Bucks. With them he won the championship in his first year, but playing and scoring very little: 7.8 minutes and 3 points on average per game, not many, if you consider that in the NBA teams often score more than 100 points in a single game . Since that season, however, he had proven to be a three-point shooting specialist, scoring from long range with a percentage of 44.7 percent, very high, but with few minutes played and therefore difficult to be representative or comparable with statistics based on longer periods.
In 2021-2022 he moved to the Memphis Grizzlies, but even there he wasn’t able to play much, and at the beginning of last season he ended up with the Cleveland Charge, practically Cleveland’s second team, which plays in the NBA Development League (or NBA G League) , the championship of teams affiliated with the NBA. In short, not finding space in the league, Merrill had to relegate to a lower league, with the hope of obtaining a new contract in the NBA. He succeeded on March 3, 2023: he signed an initial ten-day contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers, which was then renewed on a long-term basis. This year, as mentioned, he is finally starting to establish himself as an important player in Cleveland’s rotations, even if not as a starter.
Sam Merrill defending on Orlando Magic’s Cole Anthony (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
In this period Merrill is proving himself not only to be a great long-range shot specialist, but also a fairly complete player, capable of put the ball on the ground, as they say in jargon, that is, not only to receive and shoot, but also to create play starting from the dribble. It is precisely the concern of opposing defenses about his three-point shot that has allowed him to be unpredictable in other ways, in short. Merrill is also a good defender. Mike Gerrity, who coached him during his time at the Cleveland Charge, guest of the podcast specialized on the Cavaliers Chase Down said this about him: «Everyone raves about Merrill’s shooting ability, but one thing he’s very good at is defense. Sam is an all-round player, he can score three triples in a very short time, but even in the defensive phase you can always trust him.”
Merrill is unlikely to continue shooting and scoring from afar with this frequency, especially since Garland and Mobley are about to return to the field, and this could reduce the minutes available to him. In any case, in the last month and a half he has shown that he can be a useful player for the Cavaliers and his performances are contributing significantly to making them a team capable of qualifying for the playoffs, the second part of the season, the one in which assign the title.
2024-02-03 09:03:39
#threepoint #shooter #NBA #youve #heard
