Deep Dive: The Pearls And Pitfalls Of Anthony Edwards' Mid-Range Mania
Anthony Edwards' game has changed this season, but what does it mean?
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It’s a teetering tightrope that Anthony Edwards has been tiptoeing along this season. In the era of analytical thinking, the mid-range shot feels as if it is becoming more and more prehistoric every day. So, throughout a few weeks that have been packed with early-season surprises, Edwards leaning heavily into his mid-range bag has been right near the summit.
In his first three seasons, Edwards has been a paragon of modern-day scoring. His size and strength allow him to live at the rim as a rugged bulldozer and he launched over seven 3-pointers a night last season. When he entered the mid-range, it was usually as a last resort option and it usually didn’t end well. He shot just 37.2 percent on all non-rim two-point shots last season, ranking in the 22nd percentile leaguewide.
Everything has changed this season. When Edwards steps inside the arc, there’s an air of intention bleeding from his movements. Not just to get to the rim as he always has, but to go to work in the mid-range area. Last season, 28 percent of his field goal attempts came from the mid-range area, that number has skyrocketed to 48 percent so far this season, per Cleaning The Glass.
The pitfalls of this mentality are simple. A 3-point shot is worth 50 percent more points than one from within the arc and a mid-range shot is farther from the rim and inherently harder to make than any form of shot closer to the cylinder. Shooting from that range is also less likely to result in a free throw — the most efficient point-scoring method basketball has to offer.
Over the past decade, that Moreyball maxim has mutated into the league’s very existence. The mid-range shot is slowly dying and for good reason. The game isn’t played on a spreadsheet, but there’s no denying that mathematics will always play their part in a game where teams are scoring over 100 points on a regular basis.
The changing offensive landscape will still include the dinosaurs who have made a living avoiding the 3-point line and opting for the mid-range, like DeMar DeRozan and Jimmy Butler. And, of course, the generational freaks who are so good from that in-between range that nothing is off limits to their powers, like Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.
However, it seems like an odd divergence for someone like Edwards to suddenly veer away from his strengths as a rim-attacker and shot-creating machine from behind the arc in favor of what had been his key scoring weakness heading into the season.
On some nights, that’s going to be painfully obvious. Early in the season, Edwards shot 3-of-16 (19%) from mid-range in a three-point loss to the Toronto Raptors, and in their blowout loss to the Phoenix Suns, he made just two of his 10 attempts (20%) in a sluggish evening on the road. In those two instances, he attempted a total of seven attempts from the rim (making just two) and 10 shots from long-range (5 makes), compared to the 26 total mid-range heaves.
When those nights are unfurling, it’s maddening that he won’t wield the weapons that made him such a fearsome combatant for defenses to duel during his first three seasons. Again, it’s a teetering tightrope, and for a team that has no promises of regular season success, Edwards needs to be at his devastating best more often than not for the Timberwolves to squeeze as much juice as they can from the regular season.
However, as of now, those ultra-inefficient mid-range nights have been the anomaly. After 12 games, he’s shooting 46.2 percent from between five feet and the 3-point arc, a massive jump in efficiency from previous years, despite his volume skyrocketing.
It’s never going to tickle the analytical mind like a field goal at the rim, a 3-point shot, or a free throw, but that’s a number that makes Edwards’ mid-range mania more palatable. It’s clearly something he has worked relentlessly on and the proof has littered the pudding early on in his fourth campaign.
For the budding megastar, it’s about using his dominance as a driving scorer to leverage himself looks from the mid-range zone, rather than the inverse. On a possession like this one, he’s using the mid-range shot as an easy exit rather than a more efficient last resort or a tool to pry open other avenues.
Edwards comes off this high ball screen and immediately flows into this snaking dribble to the elbow, rising on what is a semi-contested jumper. However, this is a situation where there isn’t a Rudy Gobert clogging up the paint or a wall being built to repress his drive.
With Jakob Poeltl up in a very shallow drop coverage, ideally you’d like Edwards to attack the rather slow-footed (at least compared to Edwards) big man. He has a runway, both directions to go, and enough space behind Poeltl to theoretically entice him.
If Edwards gets past Poeltl, he’s sprung free and barreling toward the rim. Toronto are pushing their defensive shell high to combat the potency of a pick-and-roll consisting of Edwards and Gobert as well as Karl-Anthony Towns lurking one pass away. That means they virtually have no low-man defender to rotate over and provide rim-protection.
You can see how high the off-ball defenders are, so much so that Nickeil Alexander-Walker is inexplicably the player closest to the rim. When the floor is mapped out like this, the result has to be something more efficient than a fading 16-footer over the arm of the big.
At other times, there’s a scent of settling emanating from some of his jumpers. In previous years, his head is down and he is putting immense pressure on the rim in a situation like this:
When Chris Finch and his coaching cronies watched back the tape of that opening night failure against the Raptors, this possession would have been underlined. Technically, that’s an open look. But there’s a 3-point shot there, be it the original catch-and-shoot look or the escape dribble triple. More concerningly, the lane parts like the Red Sea when OG Anunoby flies by and Edwards ignores it for a pull-up long-two. That should be a torpedoing rim-attack ending in a bucket or a trip to the charity stripe. It just should be. For someone with Edwards’ finishing package and ability to draw fouls, it just has to be.
It’s hard to come to the conclusion that Minnesota as a team is suffering from Edwards’ romantic rendezvous with the mid-range shot. They’re sitting pretty with a 9-and-3 win-loss record, after all, but they have lost a smidge of their statistical punch as an offense and that will likely bite them on certain nights.
As it stands, the Timberwolves rank 24th in 3-point frequency, shooting just 32.4 percent of their total field goals from long-range. That’s down from 34.7 percent (14th) last season. They also rank 22nd in frequency of shots taken at the rim at 29.8 percent, a stark nosedive from their fifth-best mark last season (37.2%). Unsurprisingly, they rank first for mid-range frequency (37.9%), per Cleaning The Glass.
For a middling offense, they’re almost asking the basketball deities to smite them with the way they’re distributing their shot selection and Edwards is the main rebel in that cause. He’s the one driving the mid-range numbers and he’s boosting those numbers by taking shots at the rim and beyond the arc out of his regime.
However, despite the negative connotation swirling around the mid-range shot these days, it’s not all bad calories in Edwards’ shot diet this season. In fact, a large chunk of his most recent stardom metamorphosis he’s undergone is due to his work in the mid-range. Great players still need the mid-range, and Edwards may need it more than most.
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