Coaches constantly wrestle with the balance between old and new, integrating the newest trends and discoveries with their deeply ingrained thoughts on how the game of basketball is supposed to be played. Perhaps it’s my relative youth (I’m knocking on the door of 26, so I’ll be an unrestricted free agent this summer), but the biggest trend I’ve found other coaches or older fans struggle with is embracing the three-point shot.

Turn on TNT with Charles Barkley, and you’ll inevitably get some good old-fashioned three-point bashing.

In today’s game, the new school seems to be winning out, and the embrace of long-range sniping is pushing offenses to a new apex of production. Each item this week on my clipboard, either directly or indirectly, is tied to the value of the three. But before we dive into the nuances of the math behind it, we simply cannot ignore the blunders made in Milwaukee…

Judging Jason Kidd

December has been an eventful month for  Milwaukee Bucks head coach Jason Kidd. Whether it’s his unusual strategy of missing a free throw intentionally, his quotes on the lack of winners in the locker room (despite having two NBA champions, one of which he won a title with) or a clunky and slow offense that looks older than Thon Maker, Kidd has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately.

Yet it’s really difficult to judge the true effectiveness of a coach, even in an age where tons of metrics and data are available at the fingertips of decision-makers within an NBA organization. Coaching changes, or defining the success of one coach, is still a largely subjective venture based on expectations, culture and so many things that happen both on and off the court.

Milwaukee’s offense isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing and lacks creativity or multiple options on every play; however, the Bucks are eighth in points per possession in the half court. Two areas where coaching and scheme come into play on offense frequently are with inbounds plays, both from the sideline and the baseline. The types of play packages coaches put in are designed to get teams easy baskets for the players that might need certain scenarios created for them out of a dead ball. The Bucks are really good in these “special teams” type situations, ranking top-five in both baseline-inbound and sideline-inbound scenarios.

Defensive basketball heads who watch a lot of their games criticize their pick-and-roll coverage and willingness to overload the strong side, since that strategy gives up frequent uncontested threes. Many appear to have figured out the scheme that worked for them the past two seasons—especially apparent after watching their game against the Boston Celtics from a month or so ago. Milwaukee is top half in the league defending the pick-and-roll, though, and only six teams force more turnovers per 100 possessions.

Kidd has his fair share of blunders, to be sure. The late-game fouling strategies are foolish and indefensible. However, Milwaukee has a lot of good things going for it. The Eric Bledsoe trade, for example, has spruced up its metrics on both sides of the ball.

Before we have Kidd’s head on a plate, let’s give him longer than one month to see what he can do with this group—especially once Jabari Parker returns.

Incredible Otto

Bradley Beal has been on a tear lately for the Washington Wizards, and the return of John Wall sparked the team to a big Christmas Day victory over the Boston Celtics on the road. But Washington’s most heralded statistical darling, for the second season in a row, has been the incredibly efficient Otto Porter Jr.

Perhaps more than any other starter in the league, Porter knows who he is and rarely forces shots or tries to make plays he isn’t capable of making. He’s on pace for his second consecutive season shooting above 40 percent from three with an effective field-goal percentage above 58 percent and a turnover rate beneath 6 percent. Translation: He takes and makes the right shots, stretches the floor at an elite level and rarely gives possessions away.

According to Basketball-Reference’s Player Season Finder tool, that would be only the 25th time in NBA history such a feat was matched, and he’d have done so twice. No player had more win shares while accomplishing the task than Porter last season. He’s also the only one on the list to log more than 2,000 minutes in a season and is on pace to do so once again.

These aren’t all just easy catch-and-shoot attempts created by John Wall and Bradley Beal. Porter has a knack for hitting tough shots even when they are contested. In what can only be a statistical anomaly, he actually shoots better in situations where he’s tightly guarded than when he’s left alone. He’s currently hitting 42 percent of his treys when left wide open, 49 percent when guarded and 71 percent when guarded tight. The degree of difficulty of some of his threes is absurd:

It’s worth mentioning again: This type of offense is so valuable because Porter knows what to do with the basketball.

He either scores it or makes the simple play and defaults to his teammates; he so rarely makes a mistake that costs his team possession. Overzealous defenders who rush to chase him off the three-point line must know he’s going to make a calm, cool and collected pass that puts a teammate in a position to score:

We’ll see if this type of success shooting the ball is sustainable past just the first half of the season, but if the way he played last year is any indication, this is simply who Otto Porter Jr. is right now.

Look out for the Wizards now that Wall is healthy and Beal has gotten into a groove.

The Guarantee Date Phenomenon

At this point, the “contract year” phenomenon is fairly well-documented in North American sports: Players who are on expiring deals have extra motivation to perform well, as their next paycheck depends on it, so they tend to overperform expectations due to that financial incentive. Basketball is no stranger to this idea, and it makes a great deal of sense theoretically. Performance increases don’t directly rise across the board in a contract year, but something about the eye test brings forth a certain urgency among each athlete hunting for his own.

In the NBA, players have a similar incentive to pass a strange midseason benchmark.

On Jan. 10, all non-fully guaranteed contracts become fully guaranteed, locking teams into holding that particular player’s salary against the cap for the rest of the season, regardless of whether the player is on the roster. Jan. 10 tends to be a decision date for most teams to determine what path they’ll take the rest of the season. Do they want to have a roster spot open to absorb some player at the trade deadline? Are they a candidate to sign a veteran in March after he gets bought out? Will they be looking to try their hand with a few younger upstarts ready for an NBA opportunity? Most cases see the teams making these decisions out of financial necessity; front offices keep unguaranteed contracts on their books as fail-safes for when things don’t always go according to plan, and they need some wiggle room mid-season to get the roster back on track.

Caught in the crosshairs are the players on these deals, seeing the Jan. 10 deadline looming and trying to take matters into their own hands. The better they play leading up to that date, the harder it will be for their team to cut them for salary- ap purposes. What we tend to see is an energized group of players, scratching and clawing for their own livelihood while the rest of the league sleepwalks through the doldrums of December.

Look no further than Treveon Graham of the Charlotte Hornets for the Guarantee Date Phenomenon this season.

Graham is on a fully unguarateed contract with the Hornets, on which he’d make roughly $1.31 million if he were kept the entire year. But Charlotte, if it releases him before the deadline, can save $704k against its salary cap. Releasing him after that date would keep the entire $1.31 million on their books and count against their cap figure. The team, hard-capped and nudging against the luxury tax with only $1.95 million to spare, can vault above $2.5 million in cap space by trimming Graham, and that money (and roster spot) could come in handy if it’s looking to facilitate a mini-rebuild.

Graham is doing everything in his power to make that decision difficult for the Hornets. Since Dec. 1, Graham has shot 61 percent from three (11-of-18) and 57 percent from the field overall, scoring over seven points per game in limited minutes. Charlotte is 2-1 when he makes multiple threes in a game. He caught fire earlier this month against Oklahoma City and helped propel the Hornets to victory on the road. His spacing on the weak side is the perfect compliment to driving point guards like Kemba:

Meanwhile, Minnesota Timberwolves guard Marcus Georges-Hunt is getting run lately, preferred over Shabazz Muhammad by head coach Tom Thibodeau due to his toughness and, gasp, hard play (don’t look so surprised). Despite shooting only 25 percent from three on the year, MGH has carved out a little role in Minnesota that could keep him around past that Jan. 10 deadline.

Some guys like Spencer Dinwiddie, David Nwaba and Michael Beasley have played themselves off the roster bubble with strong starts to the year. It helps that all three are operating on fairly rebuilding teams willing to afford the patience to these players to reach their potential. Not everyone gets the opportunity they need out of the gates, though. They must wait until injuries strike or rotations change in December and pounce on their opportunity at the 11th hour.

Other interesting names to watch at the Jan. 10 deadline: Raul Neto of the Utah Jazz, Devin Harris of the Dallas Mavericks, Damien Wilkins of the Indiana Pacers and Jarrett Jack of the New York Knicks. Don’t bet on many of these guys getting the opportunity from their employers to play themselves into making life difficult on management.

Giving Up on MCW

They say to keep your words soft and sweet in case you have to eat them later…

It’s time for me to officially eat my words on Michael Carter-Williams. The Charlotte Hornets guard has been abysmal in almost any respect this season, and this may prove to be his final stop. I once defended MCW when the Philadelphia 76ers sold him to Milwaukee, upset the putrid Sixers roster, completely devoid of talented guard play, would give up on someone just because he didn’t shoot the ball well. Then the Bucks got away with highway robbery by sending him to the Chicago Bulls for Tony Snell, and it became clear Carter-Williams wasn’t a rotation-caliber point guard.

Now he’s one of the worst statistical players in the league on offense.

The guy is shooting 27 percent from the field this year! He’s somehow more efficient from three than inside the arc, despite having made only six treys. His Synergy stats by play type are even worse. According to their player-tracking data, roughly two-thirds of his shot attempts come out of either spot-up, transition or pick-and-roll situations. He ranks in the bottom 10 percent in the league in points per possession in each category, with a turnover rate above 20 percent in all three. Both in ball screens and in transition, he turns the ball over more frequently than he scores it.

The time may have come to change the rotation and accommodate the team’s lack of a backup point guard, because Carter-Williams isn’t it. Perhaps the solution is moving Nicolas Batum to more of a full-time reserve role, assuming the job of de facto point guard while flanked with shooters such as Malik Monk, Dwayne Bacon and Frank Kaminsky. The Hornets struggles go well beyond Carter-Williams, but his issues make it nearly impossible for the team to get any momentum when Kemba Walker sits.

Catch-and-Shoot Darlings

In a league that emphasizes spacing and three-point shooting so much, we don’t do nearly enough to celebrate those players who are elite at simply knocking down trey-bombs without wasting a dribble. Catch-and-shoot skills get discussed a ton during the draft process, or in theory when assessing lineup management and offensive design. Yet when it comes to the best and most efficient catch-and-shoot players, could you tell someone who’s placed at the top of the league?

Look no further than this Synergy chart of the top 15 catch-and-shoot guys (those who get the most points per possession on shots that come without taking a dribble), as of Dec. 27:

The list is littered with different levels of talent, from MVP candidates like Chris Paul to seldom-used youngsters like Henry Ellenson. Three teams have multiple guys in the top 15 here: the Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons and… the Sacramento Kings.

But two names on this list stand out as important ones to note, especially since their sample sizes aren’t microscopic. George Hill from Sacramento, who is increasingly losing his gruntles and perhaps hoping to be dealt, has been on these lists before and should be a sought-after trade target if a team can construct the matching salary. The other name is J.J. Barea, in possession of a more modest salary as a backup point guard on a team looking to cash in on the veteran assets it currently rosters. If the Dallas Mavericks can leverage this catch-and-shoot skill from Barea to their gain, they might be able to flip him for a draft pick of decent value.

The overall conclusion here should be that this type of skill is so insanely valuable and still somehow underrated. Guys like Kyle Korver and Jose Calderon, who make 57 percent of their catch-and-shoot attempts and net their team about 1.7 points per attempt as a result, provide the value equivalent of an 85 percent layup shooter. For reference, Clint Capela, the league’s leader in two-point field-goal percentage, hits about 75 percent of his attempts within three feet. That’s right… a catch-and-shoot three pointer for either of those two Cavaliers, weighted by the yield of that extra point coming behind the arc, is a more efficient shot than an attempt at the rim from the league’s best finisher.

Seriously everyone, catch-and-shoot snipers need more praise.

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All stats accurate as of December 27, 2017. Unless otherwise noted, statistics courtesy of Synergy Sports Tech, Basketball-Reference or NBA.com’s stats bureau.