You may not know about C.J. McCollum now, but you will soon
C.J. McCollum spots up from the left wing. He’s far beyond the arc. It doesn’t matter. He sinks it. Blazers lead the Wizards 7-0.
Only three minutes later, he heads to the same spot but this time, he’s farther back. He retrieves the ball, clearly feels hot, leaves his feet again. For a second time, swish. Portland now up 11.
That’s been routine this year. The 20-26 Trail Blazers haven’t always won, like they did in that game against Washington last Monday, but McCollum has done just about everything in his offensive power to make sure they do. The 24-year-old shooting guard is putting up 20.8 points per game on the season, 14 points more than he’s ever averaged. Now, he’s firmly leading the NBA’s Most Improved Player discussion.
“I think I’ve gotten better,” said McCollum. “I have an understanding of the NBA game, physically and mentally.”
The Blazers understand patience, that they aren't supposed to win yet. On the bright side, they’re piecing together a young core for the future, something Damian Lillard was a part of at the start of the season. McCollum has comfortably joined him since. The two of them make up the Western Conference’s only starting backcourt combination who each boast 20-point averages.
They’re young. They’re exciting. They have range that extends beyond every part of land James K. Polk once coveted. “54, 40” is as tied to the Portland backcourt’s field-goal and three-point percentages as it is to Oregonian history.
The surprising part of McCollum’s game isn’t that he’s scoring. He was always a scorer. So, this year isn’t about the fact that the former lottery pick is getting points. It’s how those points are coming.
C.J. McCollum is slicing teams almost exclusively with shots outside the paint.
“I think it’s important that guys get shots they can make,” said Blazers coach Terry Stotts. “And I think C.J. does an excellent job of getting to his sweet spot, whether its midrange shots.”
The Blazers have never quite been afraid of the jump shot. Somehow—whether with LaMarcus Aldridge & Co. or with the current guard—Stotts designed an offense that was midrange-reliant, but still consistently among the league’s best in a world where everyone knows the most efficient shots are ones at the rim or from beyond the three-point line.
“I think an unchallenged midrange shot by a good shooter, like LaMarcus for us or some of the guys we have now, is an excellent shot,” said Stotts. “It’s hard to get open midrange shots because they’re easier to close out to, they’re easier to contest. But if you get an open shot, that’s a great shot.”
The 6-foot-4 McCollum is no Aldridge from any stylistic perspective, of course. He’s tossing up more than six three-point attempts per game (and he’s hitting a hair under 40 percent of them), but he’s still become a player who’s comfortable operating in the middling part of the floor.
McCollum knows what the numbers say. He also knows those are general approximations that aren’t specific to the individual.
“It’s important to get to your spots regardless of the coverages and D that you’re facing,” said McCollum. “Know that if you can get to the spots, it’s a comfort shot. There’s a sense of knowing that you’ve gotten thousands and thousands of reps.”
Among players who have taken as many shots per game from the midrange area as McCollum, per NBA.com, no one is making a higher percentage of them. The only players whose percentage come close are Bulls center Pau Gasol and Magic center Nikola Vucevic, and many of their shots come on relatively open catch-and-shoot opportunities. McCollum’s, meanwhile, come off the dribble, come fading away, come off balance.
McCollum can list them all.
“One-dribble, two-dribble, pull-ups, stepbacks, in-and-out, crossover, off the screen: You just work on it, translate it to the game, and it doesn’t matter how they guard you because you’ve gotten so many reps,” he explained.
At this point, more than half of McCollum’s field-goal attempts have come from beyond 16 feet, according to Basketball-Reference. Only one in seven are coming at the rim, though he has become a more capable dribble penetrator, using an effective floater to get points closer but not all the way to the basket. But he’s not getting to the free-throw line all that often because of those ratios, which hardly helps his rawest forms of efficiency.
Still, the midrange shot is working for McCollum, and it’s working for his team’s offense.
It's a peanut butter-like game for one of the league's best pull-up jump shooters. He's actually making the defense stick in unconventionally delicious ways, pulling defenders toward him or forcing certain guys off the ball to pay just a little more attention to him, opening up lanes for cutters more than many could from that area of the court and turning the D into some gelatinous goo all too much for its liking. Meanwhile, he’s been so accurate shooting off the dribble that a C.J. McCollum pull-up, two-point shot is barely less efficient than some of the best half-court offenses in the league on a per-possession basis.
That’s not usual, but it’s what’s happening in Portland inside an offense, which has always understood the value of open jumpers under Stotts. And no longer going up against second units, McCollum is starting to get some of the toughest parts of NBA basketball.
“Each night, [I’m] facing different defenders. I’m more of a focal point on the scouting report, and I knowing that they’re going to come at you, offensively and defensively, you’ve got to be tuned in each night.”
Finally, defenders are starting to feel the same way about McCollum, as tuned into him as he is into them. And if he keeps scoring at this same pace, the basketball world will be feeling the same way once the Blazers return to prominence.
Fred Katz covers the NBA for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter: @FredKatz.
