June 17, 2014

Where does this rank on the Norwood scale?

Henderson is famous for two things - the number of threes he takes and the stupid things he says. We'll concern ourselves with only the first one here.

Shooting is the only thing Henderson does. Apart from play hard on the defensive end, an end on which he is physically overmatched with a lack of size and a lack of speed, Henderson is in the game only to cast up threes. He cannot and does not drive the ball, he cannot and does not create much off the dribble or in the pick and roll, and he is no point. What he does do is run endlessly off the ball to get open, and then shoots it on every catch whether or not the efforts to get open were successful.

34.2% shooting suggests he does not even do it very well. In Henderson's defense, he has played on a team very starved of offense and outside shooting. Only point guard Jarvis Summers could otherwise make a shot, so Henderson becomes both the primary and tertiary offensive weapons by default. But if he had more judicious shot selection, he would have helped both himself and the team more. As it is, he took all the shots because he wanted to take all the shots.

Henderson's release is extremely fast. He is quick to go around screens, and certainly puts the work into trying to get open. He can snake through them with good body control and does a good job of going straight up, and although he is probably better off screens, he can also shoot off the dribble and from spotting up. Henderson already has NBA range and uses fakes well to dupe the defense, and honestly would be a pretty good and efficient shooter if he stopped trying to do so when he wasn't open.

A big part of the problem is that, being the size that he is, it is much more difficult for Henderson to shoot when contested. 6'2 at best with short arms and not much speed or leap, defenses can tower over Henderson, and he cannot shoot over them. He has to either contort, rush the release, fade away, fade sideways, or take an extra step back, all of which hamper the shot. These things also hinder him on defense, where he is overmatched regardless of how much he runs around. And with drives to the basket off of screens being very rare, as are plays out of pick and roll sets, Henderson only really plays for this overmatchedness. He doesn't even pass off screens that much.

Does that sound desirable? Probably not. But then there'll be the occasional 7-12 three point shooting performance that changes the outcome of a game, and it all makes a bit of sense.

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