Shooting the basketball is a study in both art and persistence. No one starts with perfect form, nor can they connect on a high percentage of attempts. But the all-time greats learn through tireless dedication, which usually entails hours and hours practicing alone in a cold high-school gym on a winter morning. We tend to romanticize the allure of all the effort when we see a perfect jump shot in all its glory, but it is a work of art—masterful craftsmanship, constructed by immense patience and dedication.

Shooting is one of the most individualistic pursuits in an otherwise heavily team-oriented game. Long-range gunners might rely on teammates to set screens or deliver passes, but once the motion has started, the player and the hoop are all that matter for a single, solitary moment.

But nailing the other minute details is what sets apart good shooters from great ones. From being conditioned enough to run through screens on every possession like JJ Redick, to having a strong core which allows your upper body to act the exact same on every motion like Stephen Curry, to getting up practice attempts from every spot on the floor you may ever make shoot and knowing how to catch the ball with your feet set in those spots like Ray Allen, great three-point assassins know every tiny detail factors into their ability to maintain a high percentage.

Oklahoma’s Trae Young has certainly proved himself as one of these elite snipers in the NCAA this season. He is leading the nation in scoring and assists and is a legitimate threat to go for 40 and 15 on any given night. A quick-handed sharpshooter who terrifies opposing coaches, even 30 feet from the basket, he already showcases an elite, highly sought after skill, knocking down 39.5 percent of his three-pointers on 10-plus attempts per game (all while maintaining the nation’s highest usage rate).

He has also drawn many, many, many comparisons to another slim, baby-faced marksman who took college basketball by storm. But a question has cropped up which needs to be answered before draft day, a question that might impact the course of Young’s entire professional career:   

Can the 19-year-old phenom continue his three-point barrage in the NBA?

Scouts and fans love to draw comparisons between collegiate players and the pros we already know. Mock drafts the world over are littered with phrases like “could be the next Steph Curry”. But as I said last week, making one-to-one analogies pigeonholes the development of talent into preconceived archetypes. Young has been stacked up against Curry, as well as other shoot-first point guards like Damian Lillard, but he isn’t exactly like any one of these other players.

He is, well… young, if you will pardon the wordplay. Redick was a senior when he left Duke; Curry and Allen were both juniors, far more experienced and developed than our freshman wunderkind. He might have a more similar projection to “one-and-done” contemporaries like Kyrie Irving, Jamal Murray and Malik Monk.

But looking at the numbers from the last college season and the first professional campaign of some notable guards who specialized in long-range marksmanship might help us predict Young’s success behind the arc in his early professional career.

Data

Very few college stars make the immediate leap to being an impact player in their rookie NBA seasons, which is doubly true for shooters who have to re-zero their scopes to account for the extended three-point line. And when you look at this data, a learning curve emerges rather quickly, even in the limited arena of three-point shooting. Upperclassmen or one-and-done freshmen tend to be “the man” for their respective colleges, but as newcomers to the NBA, usually perform on a much more limited basis.

As a result, no immediate hard and fast correlation crops up between shooting percentages at an NCAA level and then in the NBA, with the exception of one sweeping generalization: They go down. Players in the case study had lower usage rates, shot fewer threes, and connected at a reduced pace during their rookie seasons (Kyrie Irving, who only played eight NCAA games, being the exception). This is to be expected.

Young’s raw shooting numbers tower above the field at 10.9 attempts per game (39.6 percent), making for a high-volume scoring trajectory that would be hard to maintain. His efficiency from three is a touch lower than his counterparts, but in large part due to his massive number of shots taken. Unsurprisingly, his best mathematical comparison is Curry, who attempted 9.9 threes per game at Davidson and converted on 38.7 percent.

His attempts will almost assuredly go down next season, but knowing the exact total is difficult. Players often excel or decline because of their fit with NBA teams, and Young, who mainly creates his three-point opportunities off the dribble from above the break, will be no exception. If he lands in a situation like working for the Orlando Magic, who are bereft of high-usage guards, he will benefit from extended periods running the offense early on and will likely see more Donovan Mitchell-like numbers. But pairing Young in a backcourt with, say, Kyrie Irving, if the Boston Celtics land a high pick from the trade with the Philadelphia 76ers this past offseason, will cause a marked decline in his attempts as he is slotted into a catch-and-shoot role as a secondary creator.

Which brings up another interesting part of the data.

While the percentages of points from three are relatively close at the NCAA level for all our shooters, those same numbers reflect a sharp divide at the professional level. Players like Irving and Lillard, both of whom became full-time quarterbacks for their team from day one, collect a much lower percentage from three while Redick, Jimmer Fredette and Monk, thought of as spot-up scorers, tend to see a large portion from downtown.

Curry falls in the middle of these two groups, splitting ball-handling duties with incumbent point guard Monta Ellis. But at the helm, after Ellis was traded, Curry acquitted himself nicely as a primary creator, as opposed to a catch-and-shoot specialist. Young (a prolific passer and skilled initiator in his own right) will likely be more akin to the former group than the latter. But again, fit is key.

Film Study

Isolating a point guard’s ability to get open, space creation and actual shooting mechanics on film can be difficult. Every backcourt player with a penchant for high-volume three-point scoring has so much more factored into their draft position than just one specific ability. However, comparing the actual mechanics of each shooter, while deep in the basketball minutiae, is critical to understanding their success.

Finding a body-type fit is important to viewing Young’s transition to the NBA. He has a smaller frame than Ray Allen and Redick (both of whom traditionally played more 2-guard) and even lacks a little height and mass when compared to traditional point guards like Lillard and Irving. His height probably limits the positional versatility others on this list possess, and he is skinny as a rail—both concerning to scouts.

But the same concerns existed around Curry.

Curry, despite his body-size concerns, had a pure stroke while still at Davidson. Take a look at his picture-perfect mechanics on this deep three:

Young, while technically solid, tends to push the ball out in front of him a little more than Curry’s straight-up-and-down method. With only 74 inches at his disposal, lengthy or athletic point guard defenders, who are more numerous in the NBA, will be able to get a hand on or alter low-release shots like this:

But Young has a quick trigger finger and can hoist threes off the dribble at a spectacular speed. Watch in this clip how quickly he gets the ball from his left hand into his shooting motion:

The ability to get shots up rapidly will allow Young to utilize picks and punish lax defenses who aren’t hedging or (God forbid) are going under on screens, similar to how Curry and Irving attack the opposition. Watch Curry in a similar situation here:

He is also a remarkable scorer off the dribble, good for 1.14 points per possession (90th percentile, per Synergy), and is posting 1.02 points per possession in pick-and-rolls, including passes (82 percentile). Navigating screens is an essential skill for point guards and is doubly important for smaller shooters who need the pick to create extra space. Young is already showing a mastery of this delicate science, using bigs to shield him before the hedging defender can help:

Coupling the entire three-point shooting package together, Young is already an impressive specimen. He has all the tools (with a few refinements) to become a huge shot-maker at the next level, but, as I have said and will continue to reiterate, finding a system to suit his immense offensive talent will be critical to reaching his ceiling.

Young needs the ball to excel, and being given the keys to the offense early in his professional career will allow him to develop quickly. He leads the nation in turnovers but should learn to control that problem with enough time.  He also needs quality rim-runners and spot-up shooters to take advantage of his ability to get the rock to open scorers, thereby creating more shooting space for himself as help defenders have to stay vigilant. With sufficient spacing around him (and defenses not keying solely on him, as they have at Oklahoma), Young can thrive early in his career. 

Not to mention, boiling his game down to his ability to shoot threes (as I have absolutely done in this analysis) sells him far short of his capabilities. He already has a full, NBA-ready repertoire, attacking the rim effectively, using his court vision to find open bigs and getting to the line with regularity (9.5 attempts per game, good for sixth in the nation).

During his freshman season, Young has been the most impressive and dynamic standout in the NCAA, and his meteoric rise up draft boards is reminiscent of Curry’s own path to stardom. Games like Saturday’s 48-point outburst against Oklahoma State have fans and NBA general managers alike ready to mortgage the farm and get a chance at this draft’s most prolific scorer.

So next Saturday, before the NBA on ABC matchup comes on, flip on the Oklahoma Sooners and watch  No. 11 to see why he is so tantalizing. Even before his NBA debut, you should get familiar with his baby face and his”‘must-see TV” skill set, because he is going in the top five during June’s draft.

He might even be the next Curry.

Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexWestNBA.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from NBA Math, Basketball Reference or NBA.com and are accurate heading into games on January 21.