Jordan Clarkson is averaging the most points of his career, but since this section of his career is occurring in Cleveland, and not in Los Angeles, people don’t really care that much. Before, he was a young draft steal in a major market. Now, he’s a chucker on one of the worst teams in the league. And yes, you can still be a “chucker” even if you’re shooting 45 percent from the field. Just because you’re making a lot of the shots you chuck doesn’t mean you aren’t chucking them.
The last few buckets in this video paint a nice picture of him; he just gets the ball about 20 feet from the basket in a one-on-one situation, and tries (and succeeds) to score the ball. Teammates? Forget about them. Defenders? Forget about them too. That sort of ISOball is almost a forgotten art in the present-day NBA, with the league’s leading practitioner, James Harden, preferring to iso by jacking up threes after dribbling around for a while.
I do find it funny that Austin Carr seemed to think it was a good thing when he said “he doesn’t care what the play is, just give me the ball” in reference to Clarkson doing his own thing instead of playing team basketball. That’s not really the behavior you want to encourage on a team like the Cavs, with a player like Clarkson. Because when you base your game on individual scoring prowess outside of the team concept, you find yourself out of the league/in a marginal role because no team wants to give you the keys to their offense like a tanking team did. Jordan Crawford waves sadly from somewhere in Europe where I presume he is.