Just like that Kentavious Caldwell-Pope dude who’s a few videos back in my Big Ol’ List of Videos, Nic “I Hate Juan Carlos Navarro’s Balls” Batum suffers from serious consistency issues. He can have games like this one where he’s an effective shooter and a great passer, and then he can have games like the last couple where he can’t throw a tennis ball into a swimming pool and his passing is inexplicably absent. After the All-Star break his shooting lines look like this: 6-of-17, 4-of-17, 9-of-18, 2-of-13, 3-of-15, and now 7-of-11 in this game. Most of those bad shooting games involved him going 1-of-6 or worse on three pointers.
Batum used to be a good shooter, and his decent three-point percentage indicates that he still sometimes is. So why does he shoot under 40% from the field (40% being the official line which small forwards should NEVER EVER cross EVER)? I don’t watch enough Hornets games to know for sure, but my guess is that he takes too many difficult midrange twos since he rarely has the will to drive to the basket for layups. He probably blames it on the paint being clogged due to the Hornets’ lack of spacing in most of their lineups, but I know the real reason: he’s too bogged down with croissants, baguettes, and smelly cheese to blow by defenders with any regularity. The Hornets should hire a nutritionist to help him fix his diet.