Phoenix Suns: Is Gary Harris better than Devin Booker?

Shot creation

The opposite of a catch-and-shoot opportunity is a pull-up, so it makes sense that we’d evaluate that next in comparing the Phoenix Suns guard to his Denver Nuggets counterpart.

Obviously, pull-ups are some of the most difficult shots in the game and it’s a good pull-up game that separates that men from the boys when it comes to stars. A player who can’t create their own shot is only so useful.

In this respect, Booker and Harris are close again in efficiency. Using NBA.com’s data again, Booker shot 36.0 percent from deep and 38.0 from the field in total, while Harris shot 34.4 percent from deep but 40.0 percent from the field in total.

However, Booker completely demolishes Harris in terms of volume. Harris took 1.4 3s as part of 4.0 shots overall, but Booker took 3.7 3s as a part of 9.0 shots overall, more than doubling Harris’s output in both categories.

Another question worth asking: who has to shoot with defenders closer to them? The guess would be Devin Booker, since other teams can afford to overload to stop them. Let’s take a look at the percent of shots each player takes by how close the nearest defender is to them, again via NBA.com.

Name – 0-2 feet (very tight) – 2-4 feet (tight) – 4-6 feet (open) – 6+ feet (wide open)

Devin Booker – 9.6 percent – 43.8 percent  – 32.2 percent – 14.4 percent

Gary Harris     – 8.5 percent – 28.6 percent – 37.8 percent – 25.1 percent

Note: This is NOT a table of the percentage of shots that go in when a player is guarded this closely, it is the percentage out of a player’s overall amount of shots that are taken when guarded this way. As such, each player’s total sum to 100, since every shot must fall somewhere along this spectrum.

As you can see, Booker has to take a lot more difficult shots than Harris. Only 46.6 percent of Booker’s shots are classified as either “open” or “wide open,” but that number is 62.9 percent for Harris.

That’s a staggering difference and likely relates to the difference between the rosters of the Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets.

There is one other statistic worth noting: percent of field goals assisted. This stat is exactly what it sounds like, and it measures what percent of field goals that a player makes come off assists.

A low percent means a player creates for themselves, and a high number means that they depend on others to create for them.

Of Booker’s 2-point makes, 33.8 percent were assisted and 61.2 percent of his 3-point makes were assisted. For comparison, Kyrie Irving‘s respective percentages last year were 26.4 percent and 53.0 percent, while James Harden’s were incredibly low at 8.8 percent and 26.0 percent.

Looking at different players’ numbers for this stat reveals a basic trend: the more capable a player is in isolations, the lower his percentages are. That makes sense based on our assumptions about the data.

Additionally, 3-point shots tend to come off assists more than 2-point shots, but that’s obvious to any regular NBA fan.

In any event, let’s get back to the topic at hand, and compare Gary Harris to Devin Booker. As one might expect, Harris’ shots come off of assists way more often than Booker’s do. In fact, 57.7 percent of Harris’s 2-point shots were assisted, and 89.1 percent of his 3-point shots were.

Those numbers are light years away from Devin Booker’s. Booker’s 2-point percentage was almost as close to iso-god James Harden’s as it was to Gary Harris’s, and Harris’s 3-point percentage was way closer to pure spot-up shooter Kyle Korver (97.6) than it was to Booker’s.

So let’s recap what has been said over the past two slides. Harris has slightly better raw percentages, Booker has better raw counting stats. However, Booker shoots a higher percentage on catch-and-shoot shots and pull-ups, whereas Harris has no edge here.

Booker also shoots more shots against tighter defenders, and he creates his own shot much more frequently than Harris.

With Booker taking a higher quantity of shots, more tightly guarded shots,and creating his own shot more while only seeing a tiny drop in his overall efficiency, he gets the edge here.

A preponderance of evidence supports the conclusion that Booker could reduce his workload and take easier shots and would likely be the more efficient player, while the inverse can’t be said of Harris.

Pure shooting and shot creation edge: Devin Booker

Note: it may seem counter-intuitive to some that Booker could be a better shooter on spot-ups and on pull-ups, but worse on overall shooting efficiency, considering those seem to be essentially the only shots a player can take. The reasons why are beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that it is an example of Simpson’s paradox. Statheads may find this interesting; for everyone else, just know that the individual benchmarks are more important indicators of true skill than the overall shooting percentage.