2. Shoot above “The Mendoza Line” from deep
In baseball, the Mendoza Line is a batting average (usually .200) such that any player who bats a worse percentage is basically considered irredeemable. Wikipedia refers to the Mendoza Line as “the offensive threshold below which a player’s presence on a Major League Baseball team cannot be justified, regardless of his defensive abilities.”
There are some similar terms in basketball (certain sections of NBA Reddit use the Singler Line, named after Kyle Singler), although none are as widely used as the Mendoza Line is in baseball. Still, the concept that a player must be a somewhat efficient shooter to succeed in today’s NBA is foreign to no one.
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There are exceptions to this rule (centers like DeAndre Jordan, truly incredible defenders like Andre Roberson, great all-around scorers like DeMar DeRozan), but generally speaking, perimeter players have to be able to hit a perimeter shot to be valuable.
That’s especially true for role players, like Reed projects to be. A guy like DeRozan or Russell Westbrook can get away with shooting somewhat inefficiently if they’re doing it at a high volume, at least according to some. Davon Reed does not have the same luxury.
If he can’t spot up next to guys like Devin Booker and Josh Jackson, he will just clog the paint and be a net negative on offense since he isn’t a great shot-creator for himself. As Reed is a good-but-not-transcendent defender, being a negative offensive player will make his presence on the team unjustified.
The good news for Reed: he’s not far away. The league average for 3-point percentage was 36.2 last year, so the Mendoza Line for poor shooting is probably somewhere between 30-33 percent. Reed shot 28.9 percent from deep last year, so if he can just up that by a few percentage points, which shouldn’t be a tall order for a great college shooter, he’ll go from “bad” to passable or even good. That should be enough to let the rest of his game shine.